Tarkington, (Newton) Booth

Tarkington, [Newton] Booth (1869–1946), Indiana novelist, first won popularity with his Monsieur Beaucaire (1900), the adventures in 18th‐century England of the Duke of Orleans, who, disguised as a barber, has an affair with Lady Mary Carlisle from which he emerges a hero and she a cheat. Tarkington had already published The Gentleman from Indiana (1899), concerned with the crusade of a country editor against political corruption, and he now wrote a series of novels of life in the Middle West, of which two won Pulitzer Prizes: The Magnificent Ambersons(1918), the chronicle of three generations of a leading Indiana family and their decline during a period of transition, and Alice Adams (1921), a study of a commonplace girl whose illusions are destroyed when a love affair with a man above her in social rank is ended by his acquaintance with her mediocre family. Growth (1927) is the title given to his trilogy of Midwestern city life: The Turmoil (1915), The Magnificent Ambersons, and The Midlander (1923); and other novels of the region include The Conquest of Canaan (1905), the story of an Indiana town; The Plutocrat (1927), a study of a self‐made businessman traveling abroad; The Heritage of Hatcher Ide (1941), about the Depression years in a Midwestern city; Kate Fennigate (1943), the humorous story of a “managing” woman; and The Image of Josephine (1945), a story of a modern girl. Tarkington is also noted for his books about boys and adolescents, of which the most famous are Penrod (1914), its sequels Penrod and Sam (1916) and Penrod Jashber (1929), and Seventeen (1916), about “Silly Billy” Baxter's puppy‐love romance. His many plays include dramatizations of Monsieur Beaucaire (1901) and Clarence (1919) and several comedies with Harry Leon Wilson and Julian Street. He also wrote short stories, essays, and The World Does Move (1928), a book of reminiscences.