Introduction

Booth Tarkington

Booth Tarkington’s career was more than magnificent. Though he is best remembered for his 1918 book, The Magnificent Ambersons, he produced over twenty novels and was one of the most popular authors of the early twentieth century. The Magnificent Ambersons was actually the second book of a trilogy. Dubbed “The Growth Trilogy,” these three novels (The Turmoil, The Magnificent Ambersons, and The Midlander) took on the daunting task of portraying the changing social landscape of America between the Civil War and World War I. The aristocrats who inhabited his novels were not foreign to Tarkington, whose well-heeled upbringing no doubt inspired his works and the trilogy in particular. For its rich depiction of changing times and changing classes, The Magnificent Ambersons continues to appear on lists of the best novels of the twentieth century.

Essential Facts

1. Tarkington studied at well-regarded universities such as Purdue and Princeton, but the majority of his degrees (including his master’s and doctorate) were honorary.
2. Tarkington has the distinction of having won two Pulitzer Prizes nearly back to back for The Magnificent Ambersons and Alice Adams. Only Edith Wharton’s win for The Age of Innocence separates them.
3. Tarkington’s novel Monsieur Beaucaire has been adapted into a play, an operetta, and two films.
4. The third novel of Tarkington’s “Growth” trilogy, The Midlander, was later retitled National Avenue.
5. The Magnificent Ambersons was made into a film by Orson Welles as his follow-up to Citizen Kane. Unhappy with it, the studio cut a significant amount of footage, which was later destroyed. An original cut, reportedly sent to Welles, has never been found.