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Pearl S. Buck BiographyAmerican Author Famous for the Novel The Good Earth
Brief biography of novelist Pearl S. Buck, prolific American writer who grew up in China, Nobel Laureate for literature and Pulitzer Prize winner.
Pearl S Buck was a prolific novelist of remarkable intelligence. She wrote more than 80 books, with The Good Earth, her best known. A Pulitzer Prize winner, in 1938 she also became the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize for literature. She earned three university degrees and adopted nine children of different nationalities. Early Years of Pearl BuckPearl Sydenstricker Buck was born in Hillsboro, West Virginia on June 26, 1892. Her parents, Caroline and Absalom Sydenstricker, a Presbyterian preacher, worked as missionaries in China, and the family moved there when Pearl Buck was only a few months old. Being foreigners, their lives were sometimes in danger because many of the Chinese had become suspicious of foreigners for that matter. That was the time of the Boxer Rebellion or Boxer Movement, an uprising by members of the Chinese Society of Right and Harmonious Fists against foreign influence. The campaign took place from November 1899 to September 7, 1901 under the Qing Dynasty in the final years of Manchu rule in China. Despite dangers, the Bucks stayed on and lived among the local people. Mid-Years of Buck: Education and FamilyBuck learned to speak Chinese before English and she only returned to the United States until she was eighteen years old. After graduating from university, she moved back to China, this time with her missionary husband, John Buck, who she married in 1917. They had one child, a daughter, who was born disabled. Successful AuthorBuck's first novel, East Wind: West Wind, was published when she was 38 years old. A year later her most famous book, The Good Earth, followed. It is a novel about the struggles of a poor Chinese farmer and became a best-seller, winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1932. She was the first person from a Western country to write about the Chinese people in a sympathetic and understanding way. Later yearsFollowing the breakdown of her marriage in 1934, she divorced her first husband, John, and returned to America, later remarrying her publisher, and setting up a charity to help disadvantaged Asian-American children. She died on March 6, 1973, aged 80. Books by Pearl S. Buck
Sources:Biographical Dictionary, edited by Una McGovern, Chambers, 2002 Dictionary of Writers, edited by Rosemary Goring, Larousse, 1994
The copyright of the article Pearl S. Buck Biography in Great Writers is owned by Tel Asiado. Permission to republish Pearl S. Buck Biography in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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