Sinclair Lewis 
Arrowsmith (Annotated) 

• This edition includes the following editor’s introduction: Sinclair Lewis, a controversial Nobel Laureate in Literature

First published in 1925, ‘Arrowsmith” is a novel by American author Sinclair Lewis that won the 1926 Pulitzer Prize (which Lewis declined with a scathing written response). The book was adapted by Hollywood as
Arrowsmith in 1931.



“Arrowsmith” takes place in the fictional town of Elk Mills, Winnemac – the same fictional town and state that figure in several of Lewis’s other novels. The novel follows the life of Martin Arrowsmith, a Midwestern physician. Disheartened successively by rural practice, the state of public health care, and the elitism of an urban clinic, Martin accepts a research position at an institute in New York that leads him, along with his wife, Leora, a nurse, to an epidemic-ravaged island…



‘Arrowsmith” is often described as the first
scientific novel considering it explores medical and scientific themes in a fictional way and it is difficult to think of an earlier book that does this.