Edna Ferber , popular and prolific novelist, short-story writer, autobiographer, and dramatic collaborator with George S. Kaufman, is remembered chiefly as a chronicler and critic of American cultural history--the bulk of her fiction having a strong regional focus--and for the presence in her writing of intelligent and resourceful female protagonists. Her portrayal of the character Emma McChesney, a traveling saleswoman, introduced a totally new motif to ladies' magazine fiction, that of the woman in the business world. A few works, notably Fanny Herself (1917), and A Peculiar Treasure (1939) deal as well with Ferber's Jewish-American heritage. Ferber's writing has a somewhat formulaic, best-seller quality which is also highly cinemagraphic, resulting in a large number of stage and film versions of her work, the most famous probably being the musical version of Show Boat, with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein and music by Jerome Kern, which is still frequently performed, and the movie...