Newton Booth Tarkington (July 29, 1869 – May 19, 1946) was an American novelist and dramatist best known for his novels The Magnificent Ambersons (1918) and Alice Adams (1921). He is one of only four novelists to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once, along with William Faulkner, John Updike, and Colson Whitehead. In the 1910s and 1920s he was considered the United States' greatest living author.[1] Several of his stories were adapted to film.

During the first quarter of the 20th century, Tarkington, along with Meredith Nicholson, George Ade, and James Whitcomb Riley helped to create a Golden Age of literature in Indiana.

Booth Tarkington served one term in the Indiana House of Representatives, was critical of the advent of automobiles, and set many of his stories in the Midwest. He eventually moved to Kennebunkport, Maine, where he continued his life work even as he suffered a loss of vision.[2]

Early life and education

Tarkington was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, on July 29, 1869,[3] the son of John S. Tarkington, a judge,[4] and Elizabeth Booth Tarkington. He came from a patrician Midwestern family that had lost much of its wealth after the Panic of 1873.[citation needed] Tarkington was named after his maternal uncle Newton Booth, then the governor of California. He was also related to Chicago Mayor James Hutchinson Woodworth through Woodworth's wife Almyra Booth Woodworth.[citation needed]

Tarkington attended Shortridge High School in Indianapolis, and completed his secondary education at Phillips Exeter Academy, a boarding school on the East Coast.[5] He attended Purdue University for two years, where he was a member of the Sigma Chi Fraternity and the university's Morley Eating Club.

Some of his family's wealth returned after the Panic of 1873, and his mother transferred Booth from Purdue to Princeton University. At Princeton, Tarkington is said to have been known as "Tark" among the members of the Ivy Club, the first of Princeton's historic Eating Clubs.[6] He had also been in a short-lived eating club called "Ye Plug and Ulster," which became Colonial Club.[7][8] He was active as an actor and served as president of Princeton's Dramatic Association, which later became the Triangle Club, of which he was a founding member according to Triangle's official history.[9]

Tarkington made his first acting appearance in the club's Shakespearean spoof Katherine, one of the first three productions in the Triangle's history written and produced by students. Tarkington established the Triangle tradition, still alive today, of producing students' plays.[10] Tarkington returned to the Triangle stage as Cassius in the 1893 production of a play he co-authored, The Honorable Julius Caesar. He edited Princeton's Nassau Literary Magazine, known more recently as The Nassau Lit.[11] While an undergraduate, he socialized with Woodrow Wilson, an associate graduate member of the Ivy Club. Wilson returned to Princeton as a member of the political science faculty shortly before Tarkington departed; they maintained contact throughout Wilson's life. Tarkington failed to earn his undergraduate A.B. because of missing a single course in the classics. Nevertheless, his place within campus society was already determined, and he was voted "most popular" by the class of 1893.

Many aspects of Tarkington's Princeton years and adult life were paralleled by the later life of another writer, fellow Princetonian F. Scott Fitzgerald.[citation needed]

Career

Tarkington's first successful novel was The Gentleman from Indiana (1899).[4] In 1902–1903, he served one term as a Republican member of the Indiana House of Representatives, an experience reflected in his 1905 short story collection, In The Arena.[12]

As a novelist, Tarkington was both prolific and commercially successful. During the 15-year period from 1914 to 1928, seven of his novels ranked among the top ten best-selling books of the year: Penrod (1914), The Turmoil (#1 best seller of 1915), Seventeen (#1 best seller of 1916), Gentle Julia (1922), The Midlander (1924), The Plutocrat (1927) and Claire Ambler (1928).[13] He produced both of his Pulitzer Prize-winning novels during the same period.

Cover page for Penrod, depicting Penrod Schofield and his dog Duke (1914)

Two of his novels achieved longer-term commercial success. Penrod was one of a select group of novels that sold more than 750,000 copies during the period 1895–1975, according to Publishers Weekly book sales data from that period.[13] At one time, his Penrod series was as well known as Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.[citation needed] Seventeen, a coming-of-age story, sold some 1.7 million copies during the 1895–1975 period. Although written for an adult audience, it came to be regarded as a children's book and was one of the best-selling books of the era in that category.[13]

The Two Vanrevels and Mary's Neck appeared on the annual best-seller lists a total of nine times.[citation needed]

Tarkington authored 25 plays, including three collaborations with Harry Leon Wilson. Some of the plays dramatized his novels.[12] Some were eventually filmed including Monsieur Beaucaire, Presenting Lily Mars, and The Adventures and Emotions of Edgar Pomeroy, made into a serialized film in 1920 and 1921. In 1928, he published a book of reminiscences, The World Does Move. He illustrated the books of others, including a 1933 reprint of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, as well as his own.

Themes

Tarkington was an unabashed Midwestern regionalist and set much of his fiction in his native Indiana. His style has been compared to that of Mark Twain and William Dean Howells.[12]

Much of Tarkington's work consists of satirical and closely observed studies of the American class system and its foibles. Themes of the nouveau riche and upward social mobility appear frequently in his books.[12]

Awards and recognition

Literary

While Tarkington never earned a college degree, he was accorded many awards recognizing and honoring his skills and accomplishments as an author. He won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction twice, in 1919 and 1922, for his novels The Magnificent Ambersons[14] and Alice Adams.[15]

Other achievements include:

Booksellers rated him "the most significant contemporary American author" in a 1921 poll conducted by Publishers' Weekly. In 1922 Literary Digest called him America’s greatest living author, and The New York Times selected him as one of the ten greatest living Americans.[16]

He won the O. Henry Memorial Award in 1931 for his short story "Cider of Normandy".

He was awarded the National Institute of Arts and Letters Gold Medal in 1933.

The Magnificent Ambersons, which Orson Welles filmed in 1942, is included in the Modern Library's list of the 100 best novels.[17]

Honorary

Tarkington's honorary degrees included an A.M. and a Litt.D. from Princeton, and honorary doctorates from Columbia University and Purdue. He made substantial donations to Purdue for building an all-men's residence hall, which the university named Tarkington Hall in his honor