A prolific and versatile writer of mainstream fiction, (Newton) Booth Tarkington is remembered for his portrayals of middle-class life in late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century Indiana. His best known works, The Magnificent Ambersons (1918) and Alice Adams (1921), were awarded the first and the fourth Pulitzer Prizes for literature. The former was adapted for the screen by Orson Welles in 1942, and the latter is considered by critics to be Tarkington's finest accomplishment. A novelist, playwright, essayist, and briefly a politician, Tarkington 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. Having achieved a wide audience but not the lasting respect of critics, most agree that his finest work was done around the time of World War I.

Born in Indianapolis, Indiana...