The Magnificent Ambersons
| The Magnificent Ambersons | |
 First edition |
|
| Author | Booth Tarkington |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Doubleday |
| Publication date | 1918 |
| Media type | |
- This is an article about the 1918 novel. For the 1942 film adaptaton, see The Magnificent Ambersons (film)
The Magnificent Ambersons is a 1918 novel by Booth Tarkington which won the 1919 Pulitzer Prize. It was the second novel in the Growth trilogy, which included The Turmoil (1915) and The Midlander (1923, retitled National Avenue in 1927). In 1942 Orson Welles directed a film version, also titled The Magnificent Ambersons.
The novel and trilogy traces the growth of the United States through the declining fortunes of three generations of the aristocratic Amberson family in a fictional Mid-Western town, between the end of the Civil War and the early part of the 20th century, a period of rapid industrialization and socio-economic change in America. The decline of the Ambersons is contrasted with the rising fortunes of industrial tycoons and other new-money families, which did not derive power from family names but by "doing things". As George Amberson's friend (name unspecified) says, "don't you think being things is 'rahthuh bettuh' than doing things?"
"The Magnificent Ambersons is perhaps Tarkington's best novel," said Van Wyck Brooks. "[It is] a typical story of an American family and town—the great family that locally ruled the roost and vanished virtually in a day as the town spread and darkened into a city. This novel no doubt was a permanent page in the social history of the United States, so admirably conceived and written was the tale of the Ambersons, their house, their fate and the growth of the community in which they were submerged in the end."
Even though the story is set in a fictitious city, it was inspired by Tarkington's hometown of Indianapolis and the neighborhood he once lived in, Woodruff Place [1][2].
References
- ^ V. F. Perkins. (08 2000). "The Magnificent Ambersons (book review)". University of Nottingham. Retrieved on 2008-07-13. "Woodruff Place in Indianapolis, Indiana can't be found on a tourist map, but it would probably interest anyone who is familiar with Orson Welles's adaptation of Booth Tarkington's The Magnificent Ambersons"
- ^ "Historic Districts". City of Indianapolis. Retrieved on 2008-07-13. "Woodruff Place was the city's first "suburb" and was the setting for Booth Tarkington's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Magnificent Ambersons"
External links
- The Magnificent Ambersons at Project Gutenberg
- The Magnificent Ambersons, 1918 first edition, scanned book via Internet Archive
- The Magnificent Ambersons, HTML with illustrations.
- Photos of the first edition of The Magnificent Ambersons
| Awards | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by His Family by Ernest Poole |
Pulitzer Prize for the Novel 1919 |
Succeeded by 1920: no award given 1921:The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton |
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