Babbitt.

LEWIS, Sinclair.

$8,800.00

Item Number: 138103

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 a humorous autographed letter signed from Lewis which reads, “Hartford, Connecticut Monday, Nov. 27, 1922, Louis My manly head is bowed up with grief. Either Gracie or I got balled up on dates. If your maid has a regrettable habit of being out Sunday evenings, just have some sandwiches and coffee — we want only the light of your countenances –well, and maybe a drink. Let thy humble servant know, o master. We’ll be staying at the Hotel Chatham, Vanderbilt and 48th. Yes, lez you and I lunch while I’m there. Tell Dick I agree with him. Salaams, Sinclair Lewis.” Near fine in a near fine dust jacket with some professional restoration. Housed in a custom clamshell box. 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).