Booth Tarkington

Seventeen: A Tale of Youth and Summer Time and the Baxter Family Especially William is a humorous novel by Booth Tarkington that gently satirizes first love, in the person of a callow 17-year-old, William Sylvanus Baxter. Seventeen takes place in a small city in the Midwestern United States shortly before World War I. It was published as sketches in the Metropolitan Magazine in 1914, and collected in a single volume in 1916, when it was the bestselling novel in the United States. Plot summary" The middle-class Baxter family enjoys a comfortable and placid life until the summer when their neighbors, the Parcher family, play host to an out-of-town visitor, Lola Pratt. An aspiring actress, Lola is a "howling belle of eighteen" who talks baby-talk "even at breakfast" and holds the center of attention wherever she goes. She instantly captivates William with her beauty, her flirtatious manner, and her ever-present prop, a tiny white lap dog, Flopit. William is sure he has found True Love at Last. Like the other youths of his circle, he spends the summer pursuing Lola at picnics, dances and evening parties, inadvertently making himself obnoxious to his family and friends. They, in turn, constantly embarrass and humiliate him as they do not share his exalted opinion of his "babytalk lady". William steals his father's dress-suit and wears it to court Lola in the evenings at the home of the soon-regretful Parcher family. As his lovestruck condition progresses, he writes a bad love poem to "Milady", hoards dead flowers Lola has touched, and develops, his family feels, a peculiar interest in beards and child marriages among the 'Hindoos'. To William's constant irritation, his ten-year-old sister Jane and the Baxters' Negro handyman, Genesis, persist in treating him as an equal instead of the serious-minded grown-up he now believes himself to be. His parents mostly smile tolerantly at William's lovelorn condition, and hope he will survive it to become a responsible, mature adult. After a summer that William is sure has changed his life forever, Lola leaves town on the train. The book concludes with a Maeterlinck-inspired flash-forward, showing that William has indeed survived the trials of adolescence....... Newton Booth Tarkington (July 29, 1869 - May 19, 1946) was an American novelist and dramatist best known for his novels The Magnificent Ambersons and Alice Adams. He is one of only three novelists to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once, along with William Faulkner and John Updike....

Alongside William Faulkner and John Updike, Booth Tarkington is one of just three authors to win the Pulitzer Prize more than once. Tarkington accomplished the feat with Alice Adams and The Magnificent Ambersons, dramas that explored the lives of fictional characters who live in a setting similar to the one Tarkington experienced in Indianapolis. Tarkington continues to garner praise for his works' historical realism.

The Magnificent Ambersons is a 1918 novel written by Booth Tarkington which won the 1919 Pulitzer Prize for the novel. It was the second novel in his Growth trilogy, which included The Turmoil (1915) and The Midlander (1923, retitled National Avenue in 1927). In 1925 the novel was first adapted for film under the title Pampered Youth. In 1942 Orson Welles wrote and directed an acclaimed film adaptation of the book. Welles's original screenplay was the basis of a 2002 TV movie produced by the A&E Network. Plot summary: The story is set in a largely fictionalized version of Indianapolis, and much of it was inspired by the neighborhood of Woodruff Place. The novel and trilogy trace the growth of the United States through the declining fortunes of three generations of the aristocratic Amberson family in an upper-scale Indianapolis neighborhood, between the end of the Civil War and the early part of the 20th century, a period of rapid industrialization and socio-economic change in America. The decline of the Ambersons is contrasted with the rising fortunes of industrial tycoons and other new-money families, who derived power not from family names but by "doing things". As George Amberson's friend (name unspecified) says, "don't you think being things is 'rahthuh bettuh' than doing things?" The titular family is the most prosperous and powerful in town at the turn of the century. Young George Amberson Minafer, the patriarch's grandson, is spoiled terribly by his mother Isabel. Growing up arrogant, sure of his own worth and position, and totally oblivious to the lives of others, George falls in love with Lucy Morgan, a young though sensible debutante. But there is a long history between George's mother and Lucy's father, of which George is unaware. As the town grows into a city, industry thrives, the Ambersons' prestige and wealth wanes, and the Morgans, thanks to Lucy's prescient father, grow prosperous. When George sabotages his widowed mother's growing affections for Lucy's father, life as he knows it comes to an end.............. Newton Booth Tarkington (July 29, 1869 - May 19, 1946) was an American novelist and dramatist best known for his novels The Magnificent Ambersons and Alice Adams. He is one of only three novelists to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once, along with William Faulkner and John Updike. Biography: Booth Tarkington was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, the son of John S. Tarkington and Elizabeth Booth Tarkington. He was named after his maternal uncle Newton Booth, then the governor of California. He was also related to Chicago Mayor James Hutchinson Woodworth through Woodworth's wife Almyra Booth Woodworth. Tarkington first attended Shortridge High School in Indianapolis, but completed his secondary education at Phillips Exeter Academy, a boarding school on the East Coast. He attended Purdue University for two years, where he was a member of the Sigma Chi Fraternity and the university's Morley Eating Club. He later made substantial donations to Purdue for building an all-men's residence hall, which the university named Tarkington Hall in his honor. Purdue awarded him an honorary doctorate...........

Newton Booth Tarkington (July 29, 1869 - May 19, 1946) was an American novelist and dramatist best known for his novels The Magnificent Ambersons and Alice Adams. He is one of only three novelists to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once, along with William Faulkner and John Updike. Biography: Booth Tarkington was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, the son of John S. Tarkington and Elizabeth Booth Tarkington. He was named after his maternal uncle Newton Booth, then the governor of California. He was also related to Chicago Mayor James Hutchinson Woodworth through Woodworth's wife Almyra Booth Woodworth. Tarkington first attended Shortridge High School in Indianapolis, but completed his secondary education at Phillips Exeter Academy, a boarding school on the East Coast. He attended Purdue University for two years, where he was a member of the Sigma Chi Fraternity and the university's Morley Eating Club. He later made substantial donations to Purdue for building an all-men's residence hall, which the university named Tarkington Hall in his honor. Purdue awarded him an honorary doctorate... Walter Jack Duncan (1881-1941) was a war artist for the United States Army during World War I. He was born in Indianapolis, Indiana. His family included a number of prominent actors, and upon graduation from high school, he -- along with a writer-artist friend, Robert Cortes Holliday -- moved to New York city to study at the Art Students' League under the prominent landscape artist John H. Twachtman. After three years at the League, Duncan began his long career of magazine illustration with Century Magazine. Some of his other magazine credits include Scribner's, McClure's Magazine, and Harper's. His varied illustration assignments before the war had given him the opportunity to travel abroad to Canada and England. He also spent time in the backwoods of Kentucky drawing the descendants of Daniel Boone in their natural habitat. Like William James Aylward's, much of Duncan's wartime effort focused on the support activities of the AEF. He traveled from the ports to the battlefield producing detailed works that recorded some of the less glamorous but essential aspects of modern warfare. Much of his work reflects the influence of his studying under a landscape artist. Duncan's favorite medium was pen and ink, and he especially liked producing illustrations for books. His work in that medium earned him the accolade of "wizard of pen and ink" from contemporary artists. During his career he became associated with a number of writers, working closely with them to illustrate their books. After the war he illustrated a number of Christopher Morley's books, including Plum Pudding and Pipefuls.... Ovid Butler Jameson Birthdate: July 17, 1854 (60) Birthplace: Indianapolis, Marion, Indiana, United States Death: Died January 15, 1915 in Crown Hill, Marion, Indiana, United States Immediate Family: Son of Patrick Henry Jameson and Maria Butler Husband of Maria Jameson and Haute Mary Booth Jameson Father of John Tarkington Jameson; Donald Ovid Butler Jameson and Booth Tarkington Jameson Brother of Anna Maria Jameson; Mary Sanders Jameson and Cordelia Cole Caldwell...

Alongside William Faulkner and John Updike, Booth Tarkington is one of just three authors to win the Pulitzer Prize more than once. Tarkington accomplished the feat with Alice Adams and The Magnificent Ambersons, dramas that explored the lives of fictional characters who live in a setting similar to the one Tarkington experienced in Indianapolis. Tarkington continues to garner praise for his works' historical realism.

The Magnificent Ambersons is a 1918 novel written by Booth TarkingtonThe novel and trilogy trace the growth of the United States through the declining fortunes of three generations of the aristocratic Amberson family in an upper-scale Indianapolis neighborhood, between the end of the Civil War and the early part of the 20th century, a period of rapid industrialization and socio-economic change in America. The decline of the Ambersons is contrasted with the rising fortunes of industrial tycoons and other new-money families, who derived power not from family names but by "doing things". As George Amberson's friend (name unspecified) says, "don't you think being things is 'rahthuh bettuh' than doing things?"

The dog's name was undescriptive of his person, which was obviously the result of a singular series of mesalliances. He wore a grizzled moustache and indefinite whiskers; he was small and shabby, and looked like an old postman. Penrod envied Duke because he was sure Duke would never be compelled to be a Child Sir Lancelot. He thought a dog free and unshackled to go or come as the wind listeth. Penrod forgot the life he led Duke. There was a long soliloquy upon the fence, a plaintive monologue without words: the boy's thoughts were adjectives, but they were expressed by a running film of pictures in his mind's eye, morbidly prophetic of the hideosities before him. Finally he spoke aloud, with such spleen that Duke rose from his haunches and lifted one ear in keen anxiety.

"Oh, I guess your GRANDmother thought so, Mr. Adams That was when all this flat central country was swampish and hadn't been drained off yet. I guess the truth must been the swamp mosquitoes bit people and gave 'em malaria, especially before they began to put screens in their windows. Well, we got screens in these windows, and no mosquitoes are goin' to bite us; so just you be a good boy and rest your mind and go to sleep like you need to." "Sleep?" he said. "Likely " He thought the night air worst of all in April; he hadn't a doubt it would kill him, he declared.