On 6 May 1926, on being offered the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his novel Arrowsmith, Sinclair Lewis wrote a public letter to the prize committee that concluded: "I invite other writers to consider , the fact that by accepting the prize and approval of these vague institutions, we are admitting their authority, publicly confirming them as the final judges of literary excellence, and I inquire whether any prize is worth that subservience." Three years later he concluded one institution was worthy of his attention, and thus he became the first American writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, which had a cash award of some $48,000 attached. "Naturally I felt that some day I would get this recognition," Lewis told reporters, " but I didn't know when. I should be just as glad if Eugene O'Neill had received it."

Six years later he did.