The Magnificent Ambersons

Synopsis

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time

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."

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize when it was first published in 1918,

Copyright:

1998

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

ISBN-13:

9780679642008

Related ISBNs:

9781607785231, 9781147394221, 9781589450158, 9781426433221, 9780884117001, 9781434100993, 9781593082635, 9781595472786, 9781414278582, 9781148688732

Publisher:

Random House Group

Date of Addition:

11/18/10

Copyrighted By:

Random House, Inc.

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

History, Literature and Fiction

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.