Booth Tarkington

Booth Tarkington 1869-1946

Booth Tarkington, wrote novels about life in the Middle West, beginning with The Gentleman from Indiana (1899) and including two Pulitzer Prize winners. Born in Indianapolis, Tarkington travelled 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 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, with many editions, incl. 2000 on E-Book), 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 (1921/1979/1997/1999), 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.

"The Floats" Booth Tarkington Boat House: built by David Heckman around 1900 as a boat building shop; later owned by W. H. Trotter of Philadelphia; best known as the boat house and studio of author Booth Tarkington from 1920's to 40's. Major alterations in 1983 for use as a private residence, including replacement windows, new wood sheathing, new porched. Now the "Kennebunkport Maritime Museum".

"Seawood" Booth Tarkington House: 1917, Neo-Classical Revival, frame, 2 stories, gabled roof with pedimented two-story portico, clapboarded. Frederick Wallick, architect. Built for noted popular novelist. 16-room house; Jacobean room with imported English stone fireplace and oak paneling from dining room of Grove House, Wanstead. Extensive gardens landscaped by Mrs. Tarkington. Stone wall with rustic gates along So. Main St. Caretaker's cottage and outbuildings.

The Schooner "The Regina" was built in 1891 in Machias, Maine. Booth Tarkington moored it beside "The Floats" in 1929. After Tarkington's death in 1946, The Regina was given a dignified burial at sea being beyond affordable repair.