Main Street (1920) was Sinclair Lewis's first best-selling novel. Although he had published five novels previous to 1920 and had made a comfortable living writing short stories for mass-circulation magazines, it was only with the publication of Main Street that Lewis became nationally famous as a writer of fiction.

As the subtitle of the first edition proclaimed, Main Street is “The Story of Carol Kennicott,” but it is also the story of her husband, Dr. Will Kennicott, and of the small Minnesota town in which they settle. Carol Milford is introduced during her college years as a potential reformer who dreams of transforming a lonely prairie town from a dreary village into a quaint collection of pi

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Published 08 March 2001

Citation: Fleming, Robert E.. "Main Street". The Literary Encyclopedia. 8 March 2001.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=3768, accessed 20 November 2009.]