Babbitt.

LEWIS, Sinclair.

Item Number: 120844

New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1922.

First edition, first issue of with “Purdy” for “Lyte” on Page 49 line 4 & “my” on line 5. Octavo, original cloth. With an autograph letter on Grand Hotel D’Angleterre et Belle Venise letterhead signed and entirely in the hand of Sinclair Lewis laid in which reads in full, “Dear Mr. Valentine: Thank you very much indeed for your letter. I’ve planned for years to attack the labor question in a novel, but I shan’t be ready for it for some years yet. Perhaps when I do get ready, I’ll write to you. Sincerely yours, Sinclair Lewis Address: Guaranty Trust Co., 1, rue des Italiens, Paris.” Near fine in a near fine dust jacket. An exceptional example.

With Babbitt (1922) Sinclair Lewis consolidated the reputation he had earned with his first best-selling novel, Main Street (1920). Like Main Street, Babbitt not only became a best seller, but it generated controversy, became a US cultural phenomenon, and eventually contributed a new word to the language. (Although the word “babbitt” has come to mean a “smugly conventional person,” George F. Babbitt is a more complex individual – and more troubled – than the dictionary definition would suggest.) Babbitt is the story of a middle-aged real estate broker who faces a series of psychological crises that reveal to him the emptiness of his superficially successful and prosperous life (Fleming).