Babbitt
Sinclair Lewis, 1922
LEWIS, Sinclair (1885-1951). Babbitt. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1922.

First edition, first state, a presentation copy. A lovely copy of Lewis’s satire of middle class America. Together with Main Street, Babbitt paved the way for Lewis’s 1930 Nobel Prize in Literature, and George Babbitt’s surname would enter the lexicon, as synonymous with conformity, materialism, and a lack of imagination. This copy is inscribed “To Efrem Zimbalist, with the hope that this book will help him in his work—at least commercially, Sinclair Lewis.” With violinist and composer Zimbalist’s leather bookplate.

Octavo. (Offsetting from bookplate to verso of front flap.) Original cloth; printed dust jacket (spine panel very faintly creased with a little light chipping at head and a touch of darkening); custom box. Provenance: Efrem Zimbalist (bookplate, inscription) – Christie’s East, 24 November 1998, lot 40.