The Gentleman from Indiana

Booth Tarkington (1869-1946) was one of the most popular writers of the early 20th Century, who first achieved acclaim with his historical romance Monsieur Beaucaire (1900). But his more characteristic work was found in such novels as The Gentleman from Indiana (1899), The Conquest of Canaan (1905), and the trilogy consisting of Turmoil (1915), The Magnificent Ambersons (1918) and The Midlander (1921). He won two Pulitzer Prizes for novels, for The Magnificent Ambersons and for Alice Adams (1921). The Magnificent Ambersons was memorably filmed by Orson Welles in 1942. Tarkington is also noted for several charming, idealized novels about childhood and adolescence, such as Penrod (1914) and Seventeen (1916), which occur squarely in the middle of the line of literary development that leads from Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer up to Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine. They are classics of period Americana.