Page 69 - Cousins - Celebrities, Saints & Sinners

Sinclair Lewis

8th Cousin -

1 time removed

Common Ancestor

Father: James Bridgeman
Winchester, Hampshire, England
1618-1676

Mother: Sarah Lyman Born: Died:
High Ongar, Essex, England 7 February 1885 10 January 1951
1620 -1688 Sauk Center, Minnesota Rome, Italy

Harry Sinclair Lewis was an American novelist, short-
story writer and playwright. In 1930, he became the first
writer from the United States (and the first from
the Americas) to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, which
was awarded "for his vigorous and graphic art of description
and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of
characters." His works are known for their critical views of
American capitalism and materialism between the wars. He is
also respected for his strong characterizations of modern
working women. H. L. Mencken wrote of him, "[If] there was
ever a novelist among us with an authentic call to the trade ...
it is this red-haired tornado from the Minnesota wilds. He has
been honored by the U.S. Postal Service with a postage
stamp in the Great Americans series.

Sinclair Lewis began reading books at a young age and kept a diary. He had two older siblings, Fred (born
1875) and Claude (born 1878). His father, Edwin J. Lewis, was a physician and a stern disciplinarian who had
difficulty relating to his sensitive, unathletic third son. Lewis's mother, Emma Kermott Lewis, died in 1891.
The following year, Edwin Lewis married Isabel Warner, whose company young Lewis apparently enjoyed.
Throughout his lonely boyhood, the ungainly Lewis—tall, extremely thin, stricken with acne and somewhat
pop-eyed—had trouble making friends and pined after various local girls. At the age of 13 he unsuccessfully
ran away from home, wanting to become a drummer boy in the Spanish–American War. In late 1902 Lewis
left home for a year at Oberlin Academy (the then-preparatory department of Oberlin College) to qualify
for acceptance by Yale University. While at Oberlin, he developed a religious enthusiasm that waxed and
waned for much of his remaining teenage years. He entered Yale in 1903 but did not receive his bachelor's
th
degree until 1908, having taken time off to work at Helicon Home Colony, Upton Sinclair's (9 cousin, 2
times removed) cooperative-living colony in Englewood, New Jersey, and to travel to Panama. Lewis's
unprepossessing looks, "fresh" country manners and seemingly self-important loquacity made it difficult for
him to win and keep friends at Oberlin and Yale. He did initiate a few relatively long-lived friendships
among students and professors, some of whom recognized his promise as a writer.

69