Booth Tarkington

Born in Indianapolis in 1869, Booth Tarkington became one of the most widely read American novelists of the early 20th century. He studied at Purdue and Princeton, and his fiction returned again and again to Indiana and the changing life of the American Midwest.

He is especially remembered for The Magnificent Ambersons and Alice Adams, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in consecutive years, as well as for the popular Penrod books. His work often captures small-town ambition, family pride, social change, and the uneasy shift from an older America into a more modern one.

Tarkington also wrote plays and collaborated for the stage, and during his lifetime he enjoyed enormous popularity. Even now, his novels stand out for their readable style, memorable characters, and clear-eyed picture of American manners and class.