Top 100 Badass Writers in History

#77: Sinclair Lewis

Born in 1885, Lewis was known as being an ungainly child. He was tall, incredibly thin, suffered from acne, and was particularly unathletic. His lonely childhood was punctuated with few friends and several unsuccessful attempts at running away to join the Spanish-American War.

Lewis attended Oberlin Academy and Yale University, yet ended up taking several years away from education in order to travel throughout Panama. It was not until after he graduated that he was able to start publishing his written work. These romantic popular stories were often throw-away pieces for magazines. 

His first serious novel, “Our Mr Wrenn,” was published in 1914. This, as well as his subsequent three novels, was unsuccessful.

Lewis finally achieved literary recognition with his work “Main Street” in 1920. This achievement pushed publishing houses to next accept “Babbitt,” another popular work that struck the heart of American consumerist culture. It was these two works that won Lewis the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1930, for ”his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humour, new types of characters.”

Lewis suffered from alcoholism in his later years, moving in and out of rehabilitation centers with alarming regularity. Yet due to the lack of desire to change his habits, his was never able to stick with any doctor for long. He died at the age of 65 from advanced alcoholism and damages to his liver. He passed away in Rome and his cremated remains were buried in his hometown of Sauk Centre, Minnesota. A final novel, “World So Wide,” was published posthumously.