Pearl S. Buck
A Cultural Biography

'An elegant, absorbing book.' Washington Post

Peter Conn (Author)

9780521560801, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 26 August 1996

500 pages, 43 b/w illus. 1 map
22.9 x 15.2 x 3.2 cm, 0.9 kg

'[T]his brilliantly conceived biography steers a sympathetic yet intelligently balanced course, revealing in fascinating detail the gripping life story of a compelling woman.' Publishers Weekly

One of the most popular novelists of the twentieth century, winner of a Pulitzer and Nobel Prize for Literature and an active social and political campaigner, particularly in the field of women's issues and Asian-American relations, Pearl Buck has, until now, remained 'hidden in public view'. Best known, perhaps, as the prolific author of The Good Earth, Buck led a career which extended well beyond her eighty works of fiction and non-fiction and deep into the public sphere. In this critically acclaimed biography, Peter Conn retrieves Pearl Buck from the footnotes of literary and cultural history and reinstates her as a figure of compelling and uncommon significance in twentieth-century literary, cultural and political history.

Preface: Rediscovering Pearl Buck
1. Missionary childhood
2. New worlds
3. Winds of change
4. The Good Earth
5. An exile's return
6. The prize
7. Wartime
8. Losing battles
9. Pearl Sydenstricker.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]