Magnolia (city)

Magnolia , city (1990 pop. 11,151), seat of Columbia co., SW Ark.; inc. 1855. Its oil industry has been important since 1938. Metal products, apparel, chemicals, and lumber are also produced. Southern Arkansas Univ. is there.

Mississippi State in s central USA, on the Gulf of Mexico; the capital and largest city is Jackson. Other major cities are Meridian, Biloxi, Vicksburg, and Laurel. The French claimed the region in 1682, but it passed to Britain after the Seven Years' War. The Territory of Mississippi organized in 1798. The state seceded from the Union in 1861. It was a battleground during the American Civil War. Racial segregation remained in force until the 1960s, when the state was a focus of the civil-rights movement. The land slopes w from the hills of the ne to the Delta, a fertile plain between the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers. Pine forests cover most of the s of the state as far as the coastal plain. Primarily an agricultural state, Mississippi is the leading producer of cotton in the USA; hay and soya beans are also grown. Dairy farming is of great importance. There are valuable reserves of oil and natural gas. Other industries: clothing, wood products, chemicals. Area: 123,515sq km (47,689sq mi). Pop. (2000) 2,844,658.

Ferber, Edna (1887–1968), Michigan‐born novelist and playwright, resided in New York City. After her first novel, Dawn O'Hara (1911), she wrote the short stories about the business woman Emma McChesney, collected in Roast Beef, Medium (1913), Personality Plus (1914), and Emma McChesney and Co. (1915). Besides other collections of stories, including Mother Knows Best (1927), she was the author of successful novels: Fanny Herself (1917); The Girls (1921), a study of three generations of women; So Big (1924, Pulitzer Prize), about Selina, a truck gardener, and her sacrifices for her son Dirk; Show Boat (1926), the romantic story of Magnolia Hawks, leading lady of her father's showboat troupe, who marries Gaylord Ravenal, a gambler, and after he deserts her becomes a successful singer; Cimarron (1930), about the 1889 land rush in Oklahoma and the region's later development; American Beauty (1931), about Polish immigrants in Connecticut; Come and Get It (1935), about the Wisconsin logging industry; Saratoga Trunk (1941), about a Creole adventuress and a cowboy gambler at a Saratoga (N.Y.) spa in the 1880s; Great Son (1945), about four generations of a Seattle family; Giant (1950), set in Texas; and Ice Palace (1958), set in modern Alaska but presenting its past too. Show Boat was made into a musical play ( Kern and Hammerstein, 1927); and with George S. Kaufman she wrote plays, including Minick (1924), based on one of her stories; The Royal Family (1927), lampooning the Barrymores; Dinner at Eight (1932); and Stage Door (1936). A Peculiar Treasure (1939) and A Kind of Magic (1963) are autobiographies.