The Magnificent Ambersons
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Winner of the 1919 Pulitzer Prize when it was first published, The Magnificent Ambersons chronicles the changing fortunes of three generations of an American dynasty. The family serves as a metaphor for the old society that crumbled after the Industrial Revolution while a middle-western town spread and darkened into a city.
George Amberson Minafer is the spoiled and arrogant grandson of the founder of the family's magnificence. George, eclipsed by a new breed of industrial tycoons and land developers whose power comes not through family connections but through financial dealings and modern manufacturing, descends from the Midwestern aristocracy to the working class. But George refuses to accept his diminishing status, clinging to all the superficiality he has always known.
As the wheels of industry transform the social landscape, the definitions of ambition, success, and loyalty also change.
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Booth Tarkington (1869â1946), who achieved overnight success with his first novel, The Gentleman from Indiana (1899), is perhaps best remembered as the author of the popular Penrod adventures and Seventeen. He was awarded two Pulitzer Prizes for Literature and in 1933 received the Gold Medal for Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Geoffrey Blaisdell is a professional actor who has appeared on and off Broadway, in Broadway national tours, and in regional theater.
