Booth Tarkington

American novelist (1869-1946)

Newton Booth Tarkingtonwas an American novelist and dramatist best known for his novels The Magnificent Ambersonsand 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.

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About the Booth Tarkington

Newton Booth Tarkingtonwas an American novelist and dramatist best known for his novels The Magnificent Ambersonsand 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. 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.

He is often cited as an example of an author a great success when alive, whose reputation and influence did not survive his death.