Sinclair Lewis was an American author and playwright who lived from February 7, 1885, until January 10, 1951. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1930, becoming the first American (and first writer from the Americas) to do so. The prize was given "for his forceful and graphic art of description and his ability to develop, with wit and humor, new sorts of characters." His books Elmer Gantry (1927), Main Street (1920), Babbitt (1922), Arrowsmith (1925), Dodsworth (1929), and It Can't Happen Here are among his best-known works (1935). His writings are renowned for their scathing critiques of American materialism and capitalism during the interwar years. He is known for his insightful portrayals of contemporary working women. If there was ever an author among us with a true call to the profession, it is this red-haired cyclone from the Minnesota wilds, according to H. L. Mencken. Romantic poems and brief sketches by Lewis, who later served as editor of the Yale Literary Magazine, were among his early works of art to be published. Lewis wandered about after graduating, working odd jobs and trying to make ends meet while penning fiction for magazines and killing time.