Although best known as a novelist, Booth Tarkington also enjoyed some success as a playwright, with such works as the stage versions of his novels Monsieur Beaucaire (Beaucaire, pr. 1901, with Evelyn Greenleaf Sutherland; adaptation of his novel Monsieur Beaucaire), The Gentleman from Indiana (pr. 1905), as well as The Man from Home (pr. 1907). Tarkington also enjoyed considerable success as a writer of short stories. Two of his stories, “The One-Hundred Dollar Bill” and “Stella Crozier,” were honored with the O. Henry Award in 1923 and 1926, respectively. In addition, Tarkington’s short-story collection “Mr. White,” “The Red Barn,” “Hell,” and “Bridewater” (1935) is one of his most respected. Tarkington also published many magazine pieces in the genres of reminiscences and literary criticism. Chief among these are “As I Seem to Me,” “Mr. Howells,” and “The World Does Move.”

Few authors have enjoyed such critical and popular esteem as Booth Tarkington experienced during his lifetime. Tarkington won two Pulitzer Prizes, the first in 1918 for The Magnificent Ambersons and the second in 1921 for Alice Adams. In 1933, he received the National Institute of Arts and Letters Gold Medal, and in 1945 he received the William Dean Howells Medal, presented by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Tarkington was awarded so many honorary doctorates that he began declining them. He did, however, accept an honorary degree in 1940 from Purdue University, which he attended for one year. Tarkington did not explore new modes of fiction, but he excelled at subtle depictions of character in the realistic mode established by William Dean Howells and Henry James, both of whom he greatly admired.