Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951)

American novelist and playwright, and the first American author to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. The award reflected his ground-breaking work in the 1920s on books such as “Main Street”, “Babbitt”, and “Arrowsmith”. He was also awarded the Pulitzer Prize for 'Arrowsmith', but declined it because he believed that the Pulitzer was meant for books that celebrated American wholesomeness and his novels, which were quite critical, should not be awarded the prize.

Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941). American author, poet, playwright, essayist, and newspaper editor, wrote “Winesburg, Ohio” (1919), "The Book of the Grotesque". Many of Anderson's contributions to American Literature reflect his own struggles between the material and spiritual worlds as husband, father, author, and businessman and also cover issues as wide-ranging from labour conditions to marriage.

Early on he was writing his own poetry and short stories, influenced by such notable authors as Carl Sandburg and Gertrude Stein. Possibly because of his early transient life and often straightened circumstances he became known for his stories that gave a voice to small town American characters and their plight with finding the American Dream.

His first novel was published when he was forty – “Windy McPherson's Son” (1916). The same year “Marching Men” (1917) and “Mid-American Chants” (1918) followed. “Many Marriages” (1923) was followed by his autobiography “A Story Teller's Tale” (1924).

His last work is an extensive essay entitled “Home Town” (1940).

His epitaph reads "Life not death is the greatest adventure". Many of his works are still in print.

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)

During the twenties, Hemingway became a member of the group of expatriate Americans in Paris, which he described in his first important work “The Sun Also Rises” (1926). Equally successful was “A Farewell to Arms” (1929), the study of an American ambulance officer's disillusionment in the war and his role as a deserter. Hemingway used his experiences as a reporter during the civil war in Spain as the background for his most ambitious novel “For Whom the Bell Tolls” (1940). Among his later works, the most outstanding is the short novel “The Old Man and the Sea” (1952), the story of an old fisherman's journey, his long and lonely struggle with a fish and the sea, and his victory in defeat. Hemingway - himself a great sportsman - liked to portray soldiers, hunters, bullfighters - tough, at times primitive people whose courage and honesty are set against the brutal ways of modern society, and who in this confrontation lose hope and faith. His straightforward prose, his spare dialogue, and his predilection for understatement are particularly effective in his short stories, some of which are collected in “Men Without Women” (1927) and “The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories” (1938).

In his writing he cut out unnecessary words, simplified the sentence structure, and concentrated on concrete objects and actions. He adhered to a moral code that emphasized grace under pressure, and his protagonists were strong, silent men who often dealt awkwardly with women. “The Sun Also Rises” and “A Farewell to Arms” are generally considered his best novels; in 1953 he won the Nobel Prize in Literature.