The Magnificent Ambersons Paperback - 1998
by Booth Tarkington
An underappreciated novel that might better be remembered (unfavorably) as the 1943 Orson Welles movie, "The Magnificent Ambersons" tells the story of George Amberson Menafer and his Hoosier family. Winner of the 1919 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
About this book
Booth Tarkington’s The Magnificent Ambersons is the second novel in the Growth trilogy, which includes The Turmoil (1915) and The Midlander (1923, retitled National Avenue in 1927). 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 upscale neighborhood, inspired by Tarkington's hometown of Indianapolis and the neighborhood he once lived in, Woodruff Place. Set 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 action.
The Magnificent Ambersons won the 1919 Pulitzer Prize for novel and is ranked 99th on Modern Library’s “100 Best” English-language novels of the 20th century. In 1942, Orson Welles directed a film version, also titled The Magnificent Ambersons.
Summary
From the jacket flap
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize when it was first published in 1918, The Magnificent Ambersons chronicles the changing fortunes of three generations of an American dynasty. The protagonist of Booth Tarkington's great historical drama is George Amberson Minafer, the spoiled and arrogant grandson of the founder of the family's magnificence. Eclipsed by a new breed of developers, financiers, and manufacturers, this pampered scion begins his gradual descent from the midwestern aristocracy to the working class.
Today The Magnificent Ambersons is best known through the 1942 Orson Welles movie, but as the critic Stanley Kauffmann noted, "It is high time that [the novel] appear again, to stand outside the force of Welles's genius, confident in its own right." "The Magnificent Ambersons is perhaps Tarkington's best novel," judged Van Wyck Brooks. "[It is] a typical story of an American family and town--the great family that locally ruled the roost and vanished virtually in a day as the town spread and darkened into a city. This novel no doubt was a permanent page in the social history of the United States, so admirably conceived and written was the tale of the Ambersons, their house, their fate and the growth of the community in which they were submerged in the end."
First Edition Identification
Doubleday, Page first published The Magnificant Ambersons in 1918. The title page and copyright page of the 516-page first editions state “1918” with no additional printings listed. The first issue dust jacket states the original price of $1.40.
Details
- Title The Magnificent Ambersons
- Author Booth Tarkington
- Binding Paperback
- Edition Reprint
- Pages 288
- Volumes 1
- Language ENG
- Publisher Modern Library, New York, New York, U.S.A.
- Date 1998-09-14
- ISBN 9780375752506 / 0375752501
- Weight 0.45 lbs (0.20 kg)
- Dimensions 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.7 in (20.07 x 12.95 x 1.78 cm)
-
Themes
- Cultural Region: Midwest
- Geographic Orientation: Indiana
- Sex & Gender: Feminine
- Topical: Coming of Age
- Topical: Family
- Library of Congress subjects Domestic fiction, Mothers and sons
- Library of Congress Catalog Number 98019552
- Dewey Decimal Code FIC
Media reviews
Citations
- New York Review of Books, 12/19/2002, Page 36
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