Booth Tarkington
| Booth Tarkington | |
|---|---|
Booth Tarkington (1922)
|
|
| Born | Newton Booth Tarkington July 29, 1869 Indianapolis, Indiana, United States |
| Died | May 19, 1946 (aged 76) Indianapolis, Indiana, United States |
| Occupation | Novelist and dramatist |
| Years active | 1899–1946 |
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.
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.
Some of his family's wealth returned after the Panic of 1873, and his mother transferred Booth from Purdue to Princeton University. At Princeton, Tarkington is said to have been known as "Tark" among his fellow Eating Club members. He was active as a student-actor and served as president of Princeton's Dramatic Association, which later became the Triangle Club. According to Triangle's official history, Tarkington made his first acting appearance in the club's Shakespearean spoof Katherine. This was one of the first three productions in the Triangle's history that was written and produced by Princeton students. Tarkington established this Triangle tradition for productions of students' plays, and it remains to the present day. Tarkington returned to the Triangle stage as Cassius in the 1893 production The Honorable Julius Caesar. He gained prominence that year at Princeton as a co-author of the play. In addition to his role as a founding member of The Triangle Club, he was also among the earliest members of the Ivy Club, the first of Princeton's historic Eating Clubs. He edited the Princeton's Nassau Literary Magazine, known more recently as The Nassau Lit. While an undergraduate, he is known to have socialized with Woodrow Wilson, an associate graduate member of the Ivy Club. Wilson returned to Princeton as a member of the political science faculty shortly before Tarkington matriculated; they maintained contact throughout Wilson's life. Tarkington failed to earn his undergraduate degree of A.B. because of missing a single course in the classics. Nevertheless, his place within campus society was already determined, and he was voted "most popular" by the class of 1893.
...
Wikipedia