Sinclair Lewis Collection - Yearbook and Letters by LEWIS, HARRY SINCLAIR

History of the Class of 1907. New Haven: Yale University, 1907 and eight letters from or relating to Sinclair Lewis. Blue cloth, re-backed with original spine laid over, 450 pp., very good condition. This yearbook was SIGNED by nearly every member of the class of 1907 including "Harry" Sinclair Lewis. This use of his first name in his signature is highly unusual. Lewis stopped using his first name by 1907 when his personal diaries reflected the change from his earlier "Harry S. Lewis" and "H. S. Lewis" to "Sinclair Lewis" in his final college diary. Other signatures in the yearbook include Pop Warner. This collection was used as the basis for an article titled "On a First Name Basis" published in the Sinclair Lewis Society Newsletter (Fall 2005). E. (Elias) Robert Stevenson and (Harry) Sinclair Lewis were close friends from Yale who maintained contact throughout their lives. Stevenson became a newspaper man and spent most of his career as an editor at the Republican-American in Waterbury, Connecticut. He was the model for the character Doremus Jessup in Lewis' It Can't Happen Here. Lewis visited Stevenson and toured the brass factories in Waterbury while doing research for a labor novel he never completed, signing this yearbook on one of those visits. A group of letters from Lewis (and others) to E. Robert Stevenson, a few related newspaper clippings, and a copy of the article "On a First Name Basis" are part of this grouping: 2-6-31 Letter from Lewis regarding Billy Sunday & Cornelius Vanderbilt "roast." 6-4-36 Letter from Lewis - going to be in Waterbury next week, "not for publication." 7-28-36 Letter from Lewis - Greetings. 2-17-37 Letter from Lewis regarding Supreme Court legislation - refers to Dorothy Thompson's column in Herald Tribune today. 6-11-37 Letter from Lewis - not going to the Yale reunion. 7-3-?? Letter from Dorothy Thompson regarding a nice editorial. 7-12-51 Letter from Ethel Fairmont Beebe regarding Harrison Smith research (author of From Main Street to Stockholm: Letters of Sinclair Lewis 1919-1930, published in 1952). 8-17-54 Letter from biographer Mark Schorer asking ERS for information regarding Sinclair Lewis, specifically relating to sociological data on Waterbury he may have provided Lewis for his labor novel.