Babbitt Audiobook

About Sinclair Lewis

Harry Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951), the son of a country doctor, was born in Sauk Centre, Minnesota. He attended Yale University, where he was editor of the literary magazine, and graduated in 1907. After a few of his stories had appeared in magazines and his first novel, Our Mr. Wrenn (1914), had been published, he was able to write full time. He was awarded the 1926 Pulitzer Prize for Arrowsmith (1925) but refused to accept the honor. However, he accepted the Nobel Prize awarded him in 1930. He was the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

About the Narrators

Michael York is a successful screen and stage actor. Among his screen credits are Romeo and Juliet, Cabaret, The Three Musketeers, Logan’s Run, and Austin Powers. Stage appearances include Britain’s National Theatre and Broadway. His television work has garnered Emmy nominations and his audio recordings Grammy nominations, as well as five AudioFile Earphones Awards. He has been awarded Britain’s OBE, France’s Arts et Lettres, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Julie Harris is one of America’s most versatile and gifted performers. She starred as Lilimae Clements in the popular series Knots Landing. She is best known to theater audiences for her Tony Award–winning portrayal of poet Emily Dickinson in the one-woman show The Belle of Amherst.

Stacy Keach is perhaps best known for his portrayal of hard-boiled detective Mike Hammer. He played Ken Titus on the sitcom Titus, Warden Henry Pope in the hit series Prison Break, and has been seen in numerous film and stage productions. He won a Golden Globe for his portrayal of Ernest Hemingway and starred as Richard Nixon in the US National Tour of Frost/Nixon. His performance in the title role of King Lear has received international acclaim.

Amy Irving is known for her numerous film roles as well as acclaimed roles on Broadway and off-Broadway. She received an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the film Yentl, Golden Globe nominations for her performances in the films Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna and Crossing Delancey, and an Obie Award for her stage performance in The Road to Mecca. More recently she appeared in the films Traffic, Tuck Everlasting, and Thirteen Conversations about One Thing.

René Auberjonois is an American stage, film, television, and voice actor and an AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator. After graduating from Carnegie-Mellon University, he acted with various theater companies, including San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater and Los Angeles’ Mark Taper Forum. In 1969, he earned a Tony Award for his performance as Sebastian Baye alongside Katharine Hepburn in Coco. Since then, he has acted in a variety of theater productions, films, and television series, in addition to being active in radio drama.

JoBeth Williams is a film, stage, and television actress and president of the Screen Actors Guild Foundation. Among her many film and television credits are Dexter, Hart of Dixie, 24, The Big Chill, and Poltergeist.

John Lithgow is an author of the New York Times bestselling Dumpty series as well as several children's picture books. His recordings for kids earned him four Grammy nominations. As an actor, he won two Tony Awards, six Emmys, two Golden Globes, and two Oscar nominations. He has starred in the hit TV series 3rd Rock from the Sun, Dexter, The Crown, and Perry Mason and in critically acclaimed films such as The World According to Garp, Terms of Endearment, and Bombshell. He has performed on Broadway twenty-five times and in England with both the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre.

Richard Dreyfuss is an Academy Award–winning actor who has appeared in such blockbuster films as Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Jaws. In 1977 he became the youngest man to win the Oscar for Best Actor, which he won for his performance in The Goodbye Girl. He also appeared in Stand by Me, What about Bob?, The American President, and Mr. Holland’s Opus, among many other films.  

Hector Elizondo is a stage, film, and television actor who was born and raised in New York. He has appeared in many Broadway productions, most notably in Arthur Penn’s Sly Fox. His many film credits include Pretty Woman and Runaway Bride, both alongside Julia Roberts and Richard Gere, as well as The Princess Diaries and Valentine’s Day.

Ed Begley, Jr. is an American actor and environmental activist. He has appeared in hundreds of films, television shows, and stage performances. He played Dr. Victor Ehrlich on the television series St. Elsewhere from 1982 to 1988. The role earned him six consecutive Primetime Emmy Award nominations and a Golden Globe Award nomination. Since 1970, he has been an environmentalist, well known for his travels in an electric car, reducing trash and recycling, and becoming a vegan.

Ted Danson has acted in a wide variety of roles in both film and television, including his starring role in the television series Cheers. He has won two Emmy Awards and three Golden Globe Awards and been nominated for many more, and he currently appears in three critically acclaimed television shows: Damages, Bored to Death, and Curb Your Enthusiasm. Originally from Arizona, he earned a bachelor of fine arts from Carnegie Mellon University. In 1987 Danson helped to found the American Oceans Campaign, an organization established to alert Americans to the hazards created by oil spills, offshore development, toxic waste, sewage, pollution, and other ocean abuses. In 2001 the American Oceans Campaign became Oceana, the largest international organization focused solely on ocean conservation, and Danson serves on Oceana’s board of directors. He lives with his wife and family in Los Angeles.

Fionnula Flanagan was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland. From an early age she grew up speaking both English and Irish on a daily basis. Her parents weren’t native Irish speakers but wanted Fionnula and her four siblings to learn the language. Her mother used to say, “A nation without a language is a nation without a soul”. Fionnula has said she will be forever grateful to them for that. She was educated at the Abbey Theatre School in Dublin and in Switzerland. She moved to Los Angeles in 1968 and lives with her husband, psychiatrist Dr. Garrett O’Connor, in Beverly Hills. Of her enormous body of work, including stage, television and film, she might be most well-known for James Joyce’s Women, in which she plays six different women who had a profound influence on James Joyce‘s life. Besides giving an award-winning performance, she also wrote, adapted and produced the piece for the stage, and subsequently as a feature film. She believes Joyce is the most important writer in the English language, most notably for Ulysses, Finnegan’s Wake and The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man.

Marsha Mason is a four-time Academy Award nominee for Best Actress and a two-time Golden Globe winner. She was nominated for an Emmy for her guest appearance on Frasier and for a Grammy for best Comedy Album in 2000. She is currently featured on the sitcom The Middle. Her Broadway credits include The Night of the Iguana (1996) and Steel Magnolias (2005).

David Selby is an actor, playwright, and poet. He received BS and MA degrees from West Virginia University and a PhD from Southern Illinois University. He is well known for his role as Quentin Collins in Dark Shadows. David has carved out an impressive stage career with many Broadway appearances, including Ghandi, The Heiress, The Eccentricities of a Nightingale, and I Won’t Dance. He has had several roles in television and film, and he has published several poetry collections.