|
Search over 100 encyclopedias and dictionaries: |
Research categories | Follow us on Twitter |
Research categories
View all topics in the newsView all reference sources at Encyclopedia.com |
|||
Alice Adams
Alice Adams, novel by Booth Tarkington, published in 1921 and awarded a Pulitzer Prize.
Alice, a pretty girl, anxious to escape her Midwestern lower‐middle‐class life, dreams of the stage or a rich marriage. Her father, Virgil Adams, nagged by his wife, leaves his lifelong job at Lamb's drug company, to open a glue factory with the formula he invented for Mr. Lamb. Alice, forsaken by local beaux because of her family's pushing ways, falls in love with a wealthy newcomer, Arthur Russell. To snare him she fabricates a web of small lies about herself and her family, which turns him against her when he sees the truth at a pathetic family dinner party. As their affair ends, her brother Walter absconds with the drug firm's money, and Virgil's new business is ruined by competition from Mr. Lamb, who nevertheless aids Virgil when he has a paralytic stroke. He recovers, his wife opens a boardinghouse to support him, and Alice, sadly wiser, becomes a typist. |
|
|
Cite this article
James D. Hart and and Phillip W. Leininger. "Alice Adams." The Oxford Companion to American Literature. 1995. Encyclopedia.com. 31 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. James D. Hart and and Phillip W. Leininger. "Alice Adams." The Oxford Companion to American Literature. 1995. Encyclopedia.com. (May 31, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O123-AliceAdams.html James D. Hart and and Phillip W. Leininger. "Alice Adams." The Oxford Companion to American Literature. 1995. Retrieved May 31, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O123-AliceAdams.html |
|
Alice Adams
Alice Adams 1926–99, American novelist, b. Fredericksburg, Va. Her deftly wry and witty fiction concerns 20th-century domestic and professional life, and usually concentrates on the lives of women in various stages of transition. Adams wrote a total of 11 novels, including Careless Love (1966), Superior Women (1984), Caroline's Daughters (1991), Almost Perfect (1993) and A Southern Exposure (1995) and its sequel, the posthumously published After the War (2000). Adams is also noted for her short stories, collected in such volumes as To See You Again (1982), The Last Lovely City (1999), and the posthumous anthology The Stories of Alice Adams (2002). |
|
|
Cite this article
"Alice Adams." The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.. 2011. Encyclopedia.com. 31 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. "Alice Adams." The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.. 2011. Encyclopedia.com. (May 31, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-AdamsAlc.html "Alice Adams." The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.. 2011. Retrieved May 31, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-AdamsAlc.html |
|
Search over 100 encyclopedias and dictionaries:
HighBeam™ Research, Inc. © Copyright 2012. All rights reserved.
The Encyclopedia.com advertising network includes:
