The Magnificent Ambersons [LEATHERBOUND LIMITED EDITION, 1919 Pulitzer Prize Winner]

Tarkington, Booth

Published by The Franklin Library, Franklin Center, Pennsylvania, 1977

About this Item

As new condition dark green full leather hardcover boards, Includes an elaborately decorated gold front and rear cover decoration and perimeter design, gold gilt page edges on all three sides, matching moire fabric front and rear endsheets, traditional three-hubbed spine, a bound-into-the-volume emerald green satin ribbon page marker, and all pages are sewn into the binding (not glued). Includes Preliminary Page About the Author/About the Book by The Franklin Library; and Author Dedication. Illustrated with black-and-white drawings by Roy Andersen. Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time. "By the time The Magnificent Ambersons was published in 1918 Booth Tarkington had already established himself as one of America's most significant contemporary authors. This compelling story traced the transition of nineteenth-century agrarian society into the impersonal industrial "age of the automobile." It was the first of two Tarkington novels to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize -- the other being Alice Adams just three years later. Tarkington attained his greatest public and critical successes during the decade 1914-24, and The Magnificent Ambersons, written during this period, was greeted with considerable enthusiasm. The Boston Transcript praised it as "alive with character and with the most delightful and genuine of human qualities," while The Nation described it as a "fascinating picutre of a national phase already past." Critics generally were equally impressed. In 1922 Tarkington was voted the greatest living American writer in a Literary Digest contest, and a New York Times poll the same year placed him on a list of the ten greatest contemporary Americans. Tarkington's Middle Western scenes were familiar ground to artist Roy Andersen (illustrator), who grew up in that part of the country. Andersen's precise technique is similar to that of an old steel engraving. The artist is a meticulous researcher and an enthusiastic historian whose work has been chosen for this collection of The Library of Congress and touring shows of the United States Information Agency and the Society of Illustration. The type is a handsome Electra on a fine offset book paper. Booth Tarkington was unsurpassed in his portrayal of life and character in the Middle West, satiric commentary on the American worship of growth for growth's sake, and description of the conflict between the genteel American tradition and the expanding opportunity for material enhancement. In The Magnificent Ambersons he succeeded admirably. - The Franklin Library, from the Preliminary Page. ". chrinicles the changing fortunes of three generations of an AMerican dynasty. The protagonist of Booth Tarkington's great historical dram 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.". Seller Inventory # 006642

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Magnificent Ambersons [LEATHERBOUND ...

Publisher: The Franklin Library, Franklin Center, Pennsylvania

Publication Date: 1977

Binding: Hardcover

Illustrator: Andersen, Roy

Condition: As New