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Maine Writers Index - Detail (Return to List) Newton Booth Tarkington (1869 - 1946) Newton Booth Tarkington (1869 - 1946) Booth Tarkington, prolific novelist and playwright, wrote "cheerful, realistic novels about life in the Middle West," beginning with The Gentleman from Indiana (1899) and including two Pulitzer Prize winners. Born in Indianapolis on 29 July 1869, Tarkington traveled throughout Europe and North America, and eventually built an estate, Seawood, in Kennebunkport, Maine, where he and his second wife, Susannah Robinson, lived from May through December each year, returning to Indianapolis for the balance. Their amenities in Kennebunkport included, besides the house, a schooner Regina and 'The Floats,' a boathouse to which Tarkington went afternoons for coffee and conversation. Kenneth Roberts (q.v.) was a close neighbor and friend. The boathouse is now the Kennebunkport Maritime Museum/Gallery. Tarkington had a middle-class upbringing in Indianapolis. He attended Purdue University and then Princeton University (class of 1893), graduating from neither. He was editor of the Nassau Literary Magazine at Princeton, which later awarded him both an honorary A.M. (1899) and an honorary Litt.D. (1918). In 1893, Tarkington returned to Indianapolis and tried to make a living from drawing and writing. A period of rejections followed his sale of a sketch with text to Life magazine in 1895, but finally, in 1898, Tarkington's manuscript The Gentleman from Indiana was accepted for publication by New York publisher S.S. McClure and became a bestseller in 1900, launching a long and financially successful literary career. The 1921 Publishers Weekly poll of booksellers rated him the most significant contemporary American author, above Sinclair Lewis, Robert Frost and Carl Sandburg. His short story, 'Cider of Normandy,' won the 1931 O. Henry Memorial Award. With his financial success, Tarkington developed into a collector of antique furniture and of paintings, particularly 17th- and 18th-century English portraits. He was a knowledgeable trustee of the John Herron Art Museum (now the Indianapolis Museum of Art) and used his knowledge of art to write Some Old Portraits (1939). He carried on an extensive correspondence with his favorite art dealers, the Silberman brothers in New York, who became the basis for his stories collected in Rumbin Galleries (1937). Tarkington felt that it was the duty of good citizens to run for public office, so, in 1902, Tarkington ran for and won a seat as a Republican in the Indiana State House of Representatives; this position provided background for his book In the Arena: Stories of Political Life. Especially in later life, Tarkington became very conservative in politics, violently opposed to FDR and the New Deal. Tarkington married twice. His first marriage, in 1902 to Laurel Louise Fletcher, ended in divorce in 1911, and his daughter by that marriage, also named Laurel, died young. In 1912, he married Susanah Kiefer Robinson of Dayton, who survived him by twenty years. He saw a good deal of his nephews, Donald, John, and Booth Jameson, the sons of his sister Haute (Mrs. Ovid Butler Jameson), and of their children. His letters to his nephews are collected in Your Amiable Uncle; Letters to His Nephews by Booth Tarkington (1949; illus. with his original sketches). Tarkington's The Magnificent Ambersons (1918), which won the Pulitzer Prize the year it was published and which was listed as #100 in the Modern Library list of the 100 Best Novels, was made into a play, Pampered Youth in 1927; the play was later released as Two to One. Orson Welles produced, directed, and scripted the well-known movie version of The Magnificent Ambersons in 1942, which is extensively described online. The book has been described as 'a] social commentary [that] charts the rise and fall of three generations of the successful and socially connected Amberson family in the face of a changing America. The spinning wheels of industry and commerce quickly overtake the old world and change the definition of ambition, success and loyalty almost overnight -- and irreversibly change the definition of the Amberson family as well.' His 1922 Pulitzer Prize winner, Alice Adams (1921), describes the 'humourously ridiculous life of a fading aristocratic family trying to get back on top of the social ladder.' It was also adapted as a play, in 1945 by Elizabeth Trotter. Tarkington's works include:
Tarkington also wrote the introduction for George C. Tyler's Whatever Goes Up: The Hazardous Fortunes of a Natural Born Gambler (1934; with J. C. Furnas), the memoirs of Tyler, theatrical manager and Broadway figure. Tarkington's stories and other works appear in many collections and anthologies. There are Tarkington papers at The Indiana Historical Society and at Princeton University; the Indiana Historical Society website includes biographical sketches of Tarkington. There are numerous books written about Tarkington, including My Amiable Uncle: Recollections About Booth Tarkington (1983), by his grand niece Susanah Mayberry; On Plays, Playwrights, and Playgoers: Selections From the Letters of Booth Tarkington to George C. Tyler and John Peter Toohey, 1918-1925 (1959; ed. Alan S. Downer); and Booth Tarkington, A Sketch, by Asa Don Dickinson (1928). Biographical material on the web is available through The Indiana Historical Society Manuscripts and Archives Dept. as well as from Princeton University; the Princeton sketch is focused on Tarkington's time there. The 4 Sept. 1939 Life magazine carried an article on Tarkington: 'Booth Tarkington -- Dean of Professional American Fiction is Still Going Strong at 70.' For a bibliography of Tarkington's works, try Dorothy R. Russo and Thelma L. Sullivan's A Bibliography of Booth Tarkington 1869-1946 (1949; 303 pp.), published by the Indiana Historical Society. His story 'Mrs. Protheroe: The Conversion of the Senator from Stackpole' (1905) is available online. Harper's offers facsimile and PDF-formatted texts of some Tarkington novels and stories. Tarkington died on 19 May 1946. Visit his gravesite via FindAGrave. |