Newton Booth Tarkington

The prolific writings of American author Newton Booth Tarkington (1869-1946) include the novels "Penrod" and "Seventeen" and many successful Broadway plays.

Booth Tarkington was born on July 29, 1869, the second child of lawyer John S. Tarkington and Elizabeth Booth Tarkington, in Indianapolis, Ind., a city which was always his home. His childhood was as happy and secure as his doting, well-educated, church-going, and prosperous parents could make it. He showed an early interest in writing and, like his fictional Penrod, produced his plays in the family hayloft. After mediocre achievement in high school he was sent to Phillips Exeter Academy.

The family suffered financial difficulties, so Tarkington entered first a local business college and then Purdue University to study art. When family fortunes revived, his mother insisted on sending him to Princeton, from which he could not receive a degree because he lacked the requisite classics background, but where he acquired a broad education and formed many associations which served him well during his life. He left Princeton in 1893 and spent the next 5 years writing, without much success in publishing his work. After McClure's Magazine serialized The Gentleman from Indiana in 1899, his novels and short stories appeared regularly in it and other magazines. In 1902 he married Louisa Fletcher and served one term in the Indiana Legislature as a conservative Republican. In 1903 he made his first trip to Europe, to which he returned regularly. A daughter was born in 1906.

From 1907 to 1910 Tarkington spent his time writing plays, mostly comedies such as Your Humble Servant and Springtime (both 1909), many in collaboration with Harry Wilson and Julian Street. Between 1914 and 1924 he wrote some plays and a trilogy of novels chronicling the rise and fall of family fortunes in midwestern industrial society. One of these, The Magnificent Ambersons (1918), was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1919. His best novel, Alice Adams (1920), also received the Pulitzer Prize. During these years he produced his famous characters modeled on his own boyhood, the title character of Penrod (1914) and Penrod and Sam (1916) and Willie Baxter of Seventeen (1916). During both world wars he devoted much effort to writing Allied propaganda.

In 1911 his first wife divorced him, and in 1912 he married Susanah Robinson. They had no children; his daughter, Laurel, died in 1923. Tarkington began losing his eyesight in the late 1920s, and he was blind in his later years. He learned to dictate and continued to write. On May 19, 1946, he died in Indianapolis.

Further Reading

The first full-length critical biography of Tarkington is James Woodress, Booth Tarkington: Gentleman from Indiana (1955). Tarkington's novels are treated in Carl Van Doren, The American Novel, 1789-1939 (1940), and Edward Wagenknecht, Cavalcade of the American Novel (1952).

Additional Sources

Mayberry, Susanah, My amiable uncle: recollections about Booth Tarkington, West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 1983.

Tarkington, Booth, The world does move, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1976. □

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.

Booth Tarkington (Newton Booth Tarkington), 1869–1946, American author, b. Indianapolis. His most characteristic and popular works were his genial novels of life in small Middle Western towns, including The Gentleman from Indiana (1899), The Conquest of Canaan (1905), and the trilogy Growth (1927), made up of Turmoil (1915), The Magnificent Ambersons (1918; Pulitzer Prize), and The Midlander (1923). Alice Adams (1921; Pulitzer Prize), considered by some his best novel, tells of the frustrated ambitions of a romantic lower-middle-class girl. He wrote several amusing novels of boyhood and adolescence, the most notable being Penrod (1914) and Seventeen (1916). His plays include a dramatization of his own historical romance Monsieur Beaucaire (1901) and Clarence (1921).

Bibliography: See his reminiscences, The World Does Move (1928); biography by J. L. Woodress (1955, repr. 1969); study by K. J. Fennimore (1974).

Tarkington, [Newton] Booth (1869–1946), playwright. The famed Indiana novelist first achieved theatrical success when he dramatized his novel Monsieur Beaucaire (often known simply as Beaucaire) with Evelyn Greenleaf Sutherland in 1901. With Harry Leon Wilson he wrote The Man from Home (1908) and Cameo Kirby (1909), and for Otis Skinner he wrote Mister Antonio (1916). Tarkington's other collaborations included The Country Cousin (1917) and Tweedles (1923), while on his own he penned Clarence (1919), Intimate Strangers (1921), and Colonel Satan (1931). Several of his novels were dramatized by others, including Seventeen (1918), Penrod (1918), and The Plutocrat (1930). Tarkington was much admired for his warm, homey humor, but like his novels, there was an underlying melancholy present as well. Biography: Gentleman from Indiana, J. Woodress, 1955.