Pearl S. Buck

Literature / Writers Datebook: June 26

 

Brief biography of American novelist Pearl S. Buck, famous for The Good Earth

Pearl S Buck was a prolific novelist of remarkable intelligence. She earned three university degrees, adopted nine children of different nationalities, and wrote more than 80 books. A Pulitzer Prize winner, in 1938 she also became the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize for literature. 

 

Early Years of Pearl Buck

Pearl Sydenstricker Buck was born in Hillsboro, West Virginia on June 26, 1892. Her parents, Caroline and Absalom Sydenstricker, worked as Presbyterian missionaries in China, and the family moved there when she 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. The Bucks stayed on and lived among the local people.

 

Mid-Years: Education and Family

Buck 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 with her missionary husband, John Buck, who she married in 1917. They had one child, a daughter, who was born disabled.

 

Successful Author

Buck's first novel, East Wind: West Wind, was published when she was thirty-eight 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 bestseller, winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1932. She was the first person from a Western country to write about Chinese people in a sympathetic and understanding way.

 

Later years

Following 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

East Wind: West wind, 1930

The Good Earth, 1931

Sons, 1932

A House Divided, 1935

The Exile, 1936

Fighting Angel, 1936

Water Buffalo children, 1943

The Christmas Ghost, 1960

The Three Daughters of Madame Liang, 1969

 

Photo credit:

Pearl S. Buck. Wikipedia Commons / Public Domain.  Pearl Buck, c. 1950. Gelatin silver print of Pearl S. Buck, 26 Jun 1892 - 6 Mar 1973 by Clara Sipprell, 31 Oct 1885 - 27 Dec 1975. Accessed June 26, 2024.

Resources:

Biographical Dictionary, edited by Una McGovern, Chambers, 2002

Dictionary of Writers, edited by Rosemary Goring, Larousse, 1994  

 

(c) June 2009. Updated June 26, 2024. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.