Immagine dell'autore.

Booth Tarkington (1869–1946)

Autore di I magnifici Amberson

89+ opere 5,788 membri 127 recensioni 10 preferito

Sull'Autore

Newton Booth Tarkington was born in Indianapolis, Indiana on July 29, 1869. He was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy, than spent his first two years of college at Purdue University and his last two at Princeton University. When his class graduated in 1893, he lacked sufficient credits for a mostra altro degree. Upon leaving Princeton, he returned to Indiana determined to pursue a career as a writer. Tarkington was an early member of The Dramatic Club, founded in 1889, and often wrote plays and directed and acted in its productions. After a five-year apprenticeship full of publishers' rejection slips, Tarkington enjoyed a huge commercial success with The Gentleman from Indiana, which was published in 1899. He produced a total of 171 short stories, 21 novels, 9 novellas, and 19 plays along with a number of movie scripts, radio dramas, and even illustrations over the course of a career that lasted from 1899 until his death in 1946. His novels included Monsieur Beaucaire, The Flirt, Seventeen, Gentle Julia, and The Turmoil. He won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction in 1919 and 1922 for his novels The Magnificent Ambersons and Alice Adams. He used the political knowledge he acquired while serving one term in the Indiana House of Representatives in the short story collection In the Arena. In collaboration with dramatist Harry Leon Wilson, Tarkington wrote The Man from Home, the first of many successful Broadway plays. He wrote children's stories in the final phase of his career. He died on May 19, 1946 after an illness. (Bowker Author Biography) mostra meno

Serie

Opere di Booth Tarkington

I magnifici Amberson (1918) 1,622 copie
Penrod (1914) 785 copie
Alice Adams (1921) 513 copie
Penrod and Sam (1916) 412 copie
Seventeen (1916) 363 copie
Monsieur Beaucaire (1900) 214 copie
The Gentleman from Indiana (1902) 126 copie
Image of Josephine (1945) 110 copie
The Turmoil (1915) 106 copie
Penrod Jashber (1915) 94 copie
The Two Vanrevels (1902) 75 copie
The Plutocrat (1927) 71 copie
The Conquest of Canaan (1905) 64 copie
Gentle Julia (1922) 53 copie
The Flirt (1913) 52 copie
Kate Fennigate (1943) 47 copie
Beasley's Christmas Party (1909) 47 copie
Claire Ambler (1928) 46 copie
Mary's Neck (1932) 43 copie
The Guest of Quesnay (1908) 43 copie
The Midlander (1924) 41 copie
His Own People (1907) 31 copie
Women (1925) 31 copie
Ramsey Milholland (1919) 29 copie
Little Orvie (1933) 29 copie
The Beautiful Lady (1905) 27 copie
Rumbin Galleries (1937) 27 copie
Cherry (1903) 24 copie
Young Mrs. Greeley (1929) 22 copie
Mirthful Haven (1930) 21 copie
Presenting Lily Mars (1933) 21 copie
Harlequin and Columbine (1921) 16 copie
The Man from Home (1908) 16 copie
Growth (1927) 13 copie
Your Amiable Uncle (1949) 13 copie
The Gibson Upright (2012) 12 copie
The fighting Littles (1941) 12 copie
Wanton Mally (1932) 11 copie
The World Does Move (1928) 10 copie
Beauty and the Jacobin (1912) 9 copie
The Show Piece (1947) 8 copie
Stories (1984) 8 copie
Clarence (1921) 6 copie
The ghost story (1922) 5 copie
The Lorenzo Bunch (2019) 4 copie
The Wren 2 copie
The Spring Concert (1916) 2 copie
Gipsy 1 copia

Opere correlate

The Literary Cat (1977) — Collaboratore — 241 copie
The Fireside Book of Dog Stories (1943) — Collaboratore — 143 copie
The Saturday Evening Post Treasury (1954) — Collaboratore — 137 copie
An Anthology of Famous American Stories (1953) — Collaboratore — 137 copie
L'Orgoglio Degli Amberson (1942) — Original book — 95 copie
More Stories to Remember, Volume II (1958) — Collaboratore — 94 copie
The Best American Humorous Short Stories (1945) — Collaboratore — 82 copie
Bedside Book of Famous American Stories (1936) — Collaboratore — 71 copie
More Stories to Remember, Volumes I & II (1958) — Collaboratore — 57 copie
100 Hilarious Little Howlers (1999) — Collaboratore — 53 copie
The Oxford Book of Historical Stories (1994) — Collaboratore — 40 copie
An American Omnibus (1933) — Collaboratore — 31 copie
Best American Plays, Supplementary Volume, 1918-1958 (1961) — Collaboratore — 28 copie
Teen-Age Dog Stories (1949) 21 copie
Alice Adams [1935 film] (2003) — Original novel — 17 copie
The Panorama of Modern Literature (1934) — Collaboratore — 14 copie
Short Story Classics [American], Volume 5 (1905) — Collaboratore — 14 copie
Chucklebait (1945) — Collaboratore — 14 copie
The Magnificent Ambersons [2002 TV movie] (2002) — Original novel — 9 copie
Los Premios Pulitzer de novela (I) (1970) — Collaboratore — 8 copie
More Stories to Remember, Volume IV (1958) — Collaboratore — 8 copie
Presenting Lily Mars [1943 film] (1943) — Original book — 7 copie
Time to Be Young: Great Stories of the Growing Years (1945) — Collaboratore — 7 copie
The Fireside Treasury of Modern Humor (1963) — Collaboratore — 5 copie
Representative American Short Stories — Collaboratore — 5 copie
The American Legion Reader (1953) — Collaboratore — 4 copie
The New Roger Caras Treasury of Great Horse Stories (1999) — Collaboratore — 3 copie
More Voices from the Radium Age (MIT Press / Radium Age) (2023) — Collaboratore — 3 copie
Piirakkasota : Valikoima huumoria — Collaboratore — 3 copie
Marriage: Short Stories of Married Life — Collaboratore — 2 copie
Eyes of Boyhood (1953) — Collaboratore — 2 copie
A Book of Narratives (1917) — Collaboratore — 2 copie
The Ethnic Image in Modern American Literature, 1900-1950 (1984) — Collaboratore — 1 copia

Etichette

Informazioni generali

Nome legale
Tarkington, Newton Booth
Data di nascita
1869-07-29
Data di morte
1946-05-19
Luogo di sepoltura
Crown Hill Cemetery, Lot 13, Indianapolis, Marion County, Indiana, USA
Sesso
male
Nazionalità
USA
Luogo di nascita
Indianapolis, Indiana, USA
Luogo di morte
Indianapolis, Indiana, USA
Luogo di residenza
Indianapolis, Indiana, USA
Istruzione
Purdue University
Princeton University
Attività lavorative
novelist
dramatist
author
writer
legislator
Organizzazioni
Indiana House of Representatives
Cliff Dwellers
Premi e riconoscimenti
William Dean Howells Medal (1945)
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1919)
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1921)
O. Henry Memorial Award (1931)
American Academy of Arts and Letters (Literature ∙ 1908)
Breve biografia
Newton Booth Tarkington, an enormously prolific novelist, playwright, and short story writer who chronicled urban middle-class life in the American Midwest during the early twentieth century, was born in Indianapolis on July 29, 1869. He was the son of John Stevenson Tarkington, a lawyer, and Elizabeth Booth Tarkington. His uncle and namesake, Newton Booth, was a governor of California and later a United States senator. In the essay ‘As I Seem to Me,’ published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1941, Tarkington recalled dictating a story to his sister when he was only six. By the age of sixteen he had written a fourteen-act melodrama about Jesse James. Tarkington was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy, Purdue University, and Princeton, where his burlesque musical The Honorable Julius Caesar was staged by the Triangle Club. Upon leaving Princeton in 1893 he returned to Indiana determined to pursue a career as a writer.

After a five-year apprenticeship marked by publishers’ rejection slips, Tarkington enjoyed a huge commercial success with The Gentleman from Indiana (1899), a novel credited with capturing the essence of the American heartland. He consolidated his fame with Monsieur Beaucaire (1900), a historical romance later adapted into a movie starring Rudolph Valentino. ‘Monsieur Beaucaire is ever green,’ remarked Damon Runyon. ‘It is a little literary cameo, and we read it over at least once a year.’ The political knowledge Tarkington acquired while serving one term in the Indiana house of representatives informed In the Arena (1905), a collection of short stories that drew praise from President Theodore Roosevelt for its realism. In collaboration with dramatist Harry Leon Wilson, Tarkington wrote The Man from Home (1907), the first of many successful Broadway plays. His comedy Clarence (1919), which Alexander Woollcott praised for being ‘as American as Huckleberry Finn or pumpkin pie,’ helped launch Alfred Lunt on a distinguished career and provided Helen Hayes with an early successful role.

Following a decade in Europe, Tarkington returned to Indianapolis and won a new readership with the publication of The Flirt (1913). The first of his novels to be serialized in the Saturday Evening Post, the book contained authentic characters and themes that paved the way for Penrod (1914), a group of tales drawn from the author’s boyhood memories of growing up in Indiana. The adventures of Penrod Schofield, which Tarkington also chronicled in the sequels Penrod and Sam (1916) and Penrod Jashber (1929), seized the imagination of young adult readers and invited comparison with Tom Sawyer. Equally successful was Seventeen (1916), a nostalgic comedy of adolescence that subsequently inspired a play, two Broadway musicals, and a pair of film adaptations as well as Tarkington’s sequel novel Gentle Julia (1922).

Tarkington broke new artistic ground with The Turmoil (1915), the first novel in his so-called Growth trilogy documenting the changes in urban life during the era of America’s industrial expansion. William Dean Howells, the father of American realism, praised Tarkington’s vivid depiction of the human misery generated by one man’s worship of bigness and materialism. The Magnificent Ambersons (1918), the second work in the series, earned Tarkington the Pulitzer Prize. ‘The Magnificent Ambersons is perhaps Tarkington’s best novel,’ judged Van Wyck Brooks. ‘[It is] a typical story of an American family and town–the great family that locally ruled the roost and vanished virtually in a day as the town spread and darkened into a city.’ The Midlander (1924) concludes the trilogy with the story of a real estate developer who is both a creator and a victim of the country’s new wealth.

Tarkington won his second Pulitzer Prize for Alice Adams (1921), a novel often seen as an extension of the Growth trilogy. The unforgettable portrayal of a small-town social climber whose outlandish attempts to snare a rich husband are both poignant and hilarious, Alice Adams was later made into a film starring Katharine Hepburn. Tarkington’s other memorable books of the period include Women (1925), a cycle of amusing stories about the flourishing social life of suburban housewives, and The Plutocrat (1927), a satire of an American millionaire abroad. In addition he turned out The World Does Move (1928), a volume of autobiographical essays, and Mirthful Haven (1930), a serious novel of manners inspired by his many summers in Kennebunkport, Maine.

In the late 1920s, Tarkington commenced a prolonged battle with failing eyesight and near blindness. After undergoing more than a dozen eye operations he regained partial vision, but he was forced to dictate his work to a secretary. His joy at being able once more to see colors maintained a lifelong passion for collecting art. The entertaining stories Tarkington wrote for the Saturday Evening Post about the art business were published as Rumbin Galleries (1937). In addition he completed Some Old Portraits (1939), a book of essays about his collection, which included works by Titian, Velázquez, and Goya.

During the final years of his life Tarkington again focused on Indiana. In The Heritage of Hatcher Ide (1941) he updated the family sagas of the Growth trilogy, while in Kate Fennigate (1943) he offered another social comedy in the spirit of Alice Adams. In 1945 Tarkington was awarded the prestigious Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Booth Tarkington died at his home in Indianapolis following a short illness on May 19, 1946. The Show Piece (1947), his unfinished last novel, profiles a young egoist reminiscent of the George Minafer of The Magnificent Ambersons.

Utenti

Recensioni

Splendido libro, che si legge con leggerezza, piacevole, suggestivo. Da questo romanzo Orson Welles ha tratto quello che è per me il suo capolavoro più bello ed intenso. Bellissima (quasi commovente) anche la prefazione di Edoardo Nesi
 
Segnalato
Alessandra_Cavagna | 49 altre recensioni | Sep 10, 2010 |

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Statistiche

Opere
89
Opere correlate
42
Utenti
5,788
Popolarità
#4,261
Voto
½ 3.8
Recensioni
127
ISBN
980
Lingue
6
Preferito da
10

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