Bibliography
Wood, Lillian. Let My People Go.Philadelphia: A.M.E.
Book Concern, 1922.
Lewis, Frederick Allen (1890–1954)
A Bostonian and HARVARDUNIVERSITYgraduate
who became a well-known editor of Harper’sand
an important resource for Harlem Renaissance
writers. Lewis was the son of the Reverend Freder-
ick Baylies, an Episcopalian minister, and his wife,
Alberta Lewis Allen. The younger Lewis’s first wife
was Dorothy Penrose Cobb. The couple had two
children, Elizabeth and Oliver, before her death in
- Lewis married Agnes Rogers Hyde, a writer
and editor with whom he collaborated, in Septem-
ber 1932. He passed away in February 1954 after
suffering a cerebral hemorrhage.
Lewis’s career in journalism began shortly
after he graduated from Harvard in 1912 and com-
pleted a master’s degree in 1913. He was a pub-
lished writer whose works had appeared in THE
ATLANTICMONTHLYand Punchwhen he joined
the staff of The Atlantic Monthlyin 1914. He joined
CARLVANDORENat THECENTURYin 1916 and
worked as managing editor there for one year.
Lewis joined Harper’s Magazineas an editorial as-
sistant in 1923. By 1932 he was an associate editor,
and in 1941 he began his 12-year appointment as
the editor of the influential magazine.
Lewis was one of several notable white literary
figures whom OPPORTUNITY editor CHARLES S.
JOHNSON invited to the legendary CIVIC CLUB
dinner in 1924. That historic event inaugurated a
powerful tradition of high social and literary gath-
erings where emerging writers were feted among
and by representatives from publishing.
Lewis is remembered for his enterprising
work in journalism and his efforts to historicize
and to preserve American culture. His Harlem
Renaissance–era publications included a well-
received book of photojournalism and one of his
several works of social history. He and Agnes
Rogers Allen coedited The American Procession:
American Life Since 1860 in Photographs(1934). In
1931 he published Only Yesterday: An Informal
History of the Nineteen Twenties.Lewis continued
to publish in the years following the Harlem
Renaissance.
Bibliography
Lewis, Frederick. Frederick Baylies Allen; a Memoir.Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Riverside, 1929.
———. Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the Nine-
teen-Twenties.New York: Harper, 1935.
Payne, Darwin. The Man of Only Yesterday: Frederick
Lewis Allen, Former Editor of Harper’s Magazine, Au-
thor, and Interpreter of His Times.New York: Harper,
1975.Lewis, Lillian Tucker(unknown)
Lewis was one of several Texas-born poets featured
in Heralding Dawn,the 1936 anthology edited by J.
Mason Brewer. Born in Corsicana, Texas, Lewis at-
tended Prairie View College, the University of
Denver, and Kansas University before pursuing a
career in teaching.
A published poet, Lewis and her works have
slipped into obscurity. Heralding Dawn includes
only one poem by the writer, who apparently pub-
lished in a number of Texas magazines and newspa-
pers. “Longing” suggests Lewis’s interest in
religion, nature, and the finite nature of life.Lewis, Sinclair(1885–1951)
A talented writer who, in 1930, became the first
American to win the Nobel Prize in literature.
Born in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, he was one of
three sons born to Edwin and Emma Kermott
Lewis. In 1892 his recently widowed father married
Isabel Warner. Lewis enrolled at YALEUNIVERSITY
in 1903. He graduated in 1908 after taking some
time away from his studies to travel through En-
gland and Panama. He married Grace Livingston
Hegger, a Voguemagazine staffer, in 1914. They
had one son, Wells Lewis, a serviceman who died
in World War II. Following his divorce from Heg-
ger, Lewis married Dorothy Thompson, a journal-
ist. The couple had one son, Michael, before their
divorce in 1942. Sinclair Lewis died in Rome in
January 1951 and was buried between his parents
in Sauk Centre, Minnesota.
Lewis was catapulted to fame by Main Street,
his seventh novel. Published by HARCOURTBRACE
in 1920, the novel was a sensational hit that of-
fered an absorbing and multifaceted critique of
American culture.310 Lewis, Frederick Allen