Main Street: The Story of Carol Kennicott (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) - Softcover

Lewis, Sinclair

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140189017 ISBN 13: 9780140189018

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 1995

Synopsis

Sinclair Lewis's barbed portrait of Gopher Prairie, Minnesota, shattered the myth of the American Middle West as God's Country and became a symbol of the cultural narrow-mindedness and smug complacency of small towns everywhere.

A Penguin Classic

At the center of Main Street is Carol Kennicott, the wife of a town doctor, who dreams of initiating social reforms and introducing art and literature to the community. The range of reactions when it was published in 1920 was extraordinary, reflecting the ambivalence in the novel itself and Lewis's own mixed feelings about his hometwon of Sauk Centre, Minnesota, the prototype for Gopher Prairie.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

About this title

From the Publisher:

This classic by Sinclair Lewis shattered the sentimental American myth of happy small-town life with its satire. Main Street attacks the conformity and dullness of early 20th Century midwestern village life in the story of Carol Milford, the city girl who marries the town doctor. Her efforts to bring culture to the prairie village are met by a wall of gossip, greed, and petty small-minded bigotry. Lewis's complex and compelling work established him as an important character in American literature.

From the Back Cover:

This famous novel of life on Main Street, Gopher Prairie, mirrors with devastating honesty life on Main Streets from Albany to San Diego.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0140189017
• ISBN 13: 9780140189018
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 448
• Editor: Bucco Martin