The Magnificent Ambersons.

TARKINGTON, Booth.

Item Number: 142907

Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1918.

First edition of the author’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, basis for the classic Orson Wells film often regarded as among the greatest films of all time. Octavo, bound in full morocco by the Harcourt Bindery, gilt titles and ruling to the spine, raised bands, gilt ruled to the front and rear panels, inner dentelles, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt, inscribed on a tipped in page by the author, “Gladly inscribed for Mrs. Jerome Pelter Booth Tarkington Indianapolis May 9, 1944.” In fine condition. An exceptional presentation.

The Magnificent Ambersons chronicles the changing fortunes of three generations of an American dynasty. The protagonist of Booth Tarkington's great historical drama is George Amberson Minafer, the spoiled and arrogant grandson of the founder of the family's magnificence. Eclipsed by a new breed of developers, financiers, and manufacturers, this pampered scion begins his gradual descent from the midwestern aristocracy to the working class. It is perhaps Tarkington's best novel," judged Van Wyck Brooks. "[It is] a typical story of an American family and town--the great family that locally ruled the roost and vanished virtually in a day as the town spread and darkened into a city. This novel no doubt was a permanent page in the social history of the United States, so admirably conceived and written was the tale of the Ambersons, their house, their fate and the growth of the community in which they were submerged in the end." In 1925 the novel was first adapted for film under the title Pampered Youth. In 1942 Orson Welles wrote and directed an acclaimed film adaptation. Listed by Modern Library as one of the 100 greatest novels of the twentieth century.