Born in 1886, in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, Henry Sinclair Lewis became the first American novelist to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. The son of a country doctor, from a family of three boys, he grew up introverted and intelligent in this town with a population of 2,800, most of which was Swedish and Norwegian. At the age of 17 he broke free of the mid-west, entering Yale, and from there he worked unsuccessfully in publishing for several years. In his spare time he wrote, and after producing five novels, all of which went unnoticed, he became a household name with Main Street in late 1920. After this publication, he had several consecutive successes: Babbitt (1922), Arrowsmith (1925), Mantrap (1926), Elmer Gantry (1927), The Man Who Knew Coolidge (1928), and Dodsworth (1929) were all well received. In 1926 Lewis was to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his novel Arrowsmith, but refused. Four years later, however, he accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature.