# 1856 - 1985 14c Great Americans: Sinclair Lewis

U.S. #1856
1985 14¢ Sinclair Lewis
Great Americans

• 22^nd Stamp in the Great Americans Series
• Issued for Lewis’ 100^th birthday
• Honors the first American to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature

Stamp Category:  Definitive
Series:  Great Americans
Value:  14¢; postcard rate
First Day of Issue:  March 21, 1985
First Day City:  Sauk Centre, Minnesota
Quantity Issued:  625,800,000
Printed by:  Bureau of Engraving & Printing
Printing Method:  Engraved
Format:  Panes of 100
Perforations:  11
Color:  Slate green

Why the stamp was issued:  This stamp was issued for the 100^th anniversary of Lewis’ birth and paid the postcard rate.

About the stamp design:  Bradbury Thompson designed this stamp, using a charcoal portrait by Soss Melik from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. 

First Day City:  The First Day ceremony for this stamp was held in the auditorium of the Sinclair Lewis Elementary School in his hometown of Sauk Centre, Minnesota. 

Unusual fact about this stamp:  There are three different imperforate errors of this stamp: vertical pair imperforate horizontal (1856b), imperforate between horizontal pair (1856c), and imperforate between vertical pair (1856d).

About the Great Americans Series:  The Great Americans Series was created to replace the Americana Series.  The new series would be characterized by a standard definitive size, simple design, and monochromatic colors. 

This simple design included a portrait, “USA,” the denomination, the person’s name, and in some cases, their occupation or reason for recognition.  The first stamp in the new series was issued on December 27, 1980.  It honored Sequoyah and fulfilled the new international postcard rate that would go into effect in January 1981.

The Great Americans Series would honor a wider range of people than the previous Prominent Americans and Liberty Series.  While those series mainly honored presidents and politicians, the Great Americans Series featured people from many fields and ethnicities.  They were individuals who were leaders in education, the military, literature, the arts, and human and civil rights.  Plus, while the previous series only honored a few women, the Great Americans featured 15 women.  This was also the first definitive series to honor Native Americans, with five stamps.

The Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP) produced most of the stamps, but private firms printed some.  Several stamps saw multiple printings.  The result was many different varieties, with tagging being the key to understanding them.  Though there were also differences in perforations, gum, paper, and ink color.

The final stamp in the series was issued on July 17, 1999, honoring Justin S. Morrill.  Spanning 20 years, the Great Americans was the longest-running US definitive series.  It was also the largest series of face-different stamps, with a total of 63.

Click here for all the individual stamps and click here for the complete series.

History the stamp represents:  Harry Sinclair Lewis was born on February 7, 1885, in Sauk Centre, Minnesota.

The third and youngest son of a doctor, Lewis enjoyed reading and keeping a diary as a child. When he was 13, Lewis ran away from home to become a drummer boy in the Spanish-American War but his father found him and made him return.

Lewis attended Oberlin Academy and later Yale University. He took a break from his studies at Yale to work at Upton Sinclair’s Helicon Home Colony in New Jersey and travel to Panama. Lewis eventually returned to Yale, where he first published his writing in the Yale Courant and Yale Literary Magazine, where he also worked as an editor before graduating in 1908.

Following his graduation, Lewis worked a variety of jobs but continued to write and publish his works. During this time, he wrote a number of popular stories that appeared in magazines. He also sold some plot ideas to fellow writer Jack London.

Lewis published his first book, Hike and the Aeroplane, in 1912 under the pseudonym Tom Graham. Two years later he published his first serious novel, Our Mr. Wrenn: The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man. In the coming years, he published The Trail of the Hawk: A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life and The Job. He also wrote serialized stories for magazines that were later expanded into book form – The Innocents: A Story for Lovers and Free Air.

During this period Lewis also moved to Washington, DC, to devote his full attention to writing. He spent several years working on a realistic novel about small-town life that eventually became Main Street. Published in 1920, Main Street was Lewis’ first major commercial success. It sold 180,000 copies in the first six months and about two million in the first few years. According to Lewis’ biographer, Main Street “was the most sensational event in twentieth-century American publishing history.”

Lewis followed this success with Babbitt and Arrowsmith. Arrowsmith was awarded the Pulitzer Prize (which Lewis declined) and made into a movie in 1931 by John Ford. That movie was then nominated for four Academy Awards. In 1927 Lewis published the controversial novel Elmer Gantry, about an unethical minister. It was banned in some cities and denounced by many religious later. Though several years later it was also made into a move that earned Burt Lancaster a Best Oscar award.

In 1929 Lewis published Dodsworth. Like many of his other popular works, this too was adopted for other media – first in 1934 for a Broadway play and then in 1936 for a movie. That movie was later selected for preservation on the National Film Registry.

Also, during this era, Lewis wrote a number of short stories for magazines. Among those stories was “Little Bear Bongo,” which first appeared in Cosmopolitan magazine. Walt Disney Studios acquired the rights and made it into a cartoon short narrated by Dinah Shore as part of its 1947 Fun and Fancy Free.

Perhaps one of Lewis’ greatest honors came in 1930 when he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. He was the first American writer to ever receive the award. After that he wrote eleven more novels, the most successful being It Can’t Happen Here. Also, during this period Lewis briefly taught a class at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, toured the country giving debate-lectures with Lewis Browne, wrote a screenplay, and purchased a farm.

Lewis died on January 10, 1951. Concerned with social issues including sexism, racism, and poverty, Lewis is remembered as the conscience of his generation. Lewis was a prominent member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.