The Magnificent Ambersons (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

By Booth Tarkington and Nahma Sandrow

The Magnificent Ambersons, by Booth Tarkington, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:

• New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars
• Biographies of the authors
• Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events
• Footnotes and endnotes
• Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work
• Comments by other famous authors
• Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations
• Bibliographies for further reading
• Indices & Glossaries, when appropriate

All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.   Largely overshadowed by Orson Welles’s famous 1941 screen version, Booth Tarkington’s novel The Magnificent Ambersons was not only a best-seller when it first appeared in 1918—it also won the Pulitzer Prize.

Set in the Midwest in the early twentieth century—the dawn of the automobile age—the novel begins by introducing the richest family in town, the Ambersons. Exemplifying aristocratic excess, the Ambersons have everything money can buy—and more. But George Amberson Minafer—the spoiled grandson of the family patriarch—is unable to see that great societal changes are taking place, and that business tycoons, industrialists, and real estate developers will soon surpass him in wealth and prestige. Rather than join the new mechanical age, George prefers to remain a gentleman, believing that “being things” is superior to “doing things.” But as his town becomes a city, and the family palace is enveloped in a cloud of soot, George’s protectors disappear one by one, and the elegant, cloistered lifestyle of the Ambersons fades from view, and finally vanishes altogether.

A brilliant portrayal of the changing landscape of the American dream, The Magnificent Ambersons is a timeless classic that deserves a wider modern audience.  

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble Classics
• Release date: Jun 1, 2009
• ISBN: 9781411432611

Booth Tarkington

Booth Tarkington (1869 - 1946) was an American novelist and dramatist, known for most of his career as “The Midwesterner.” Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, Tarkington was a personable and charming student who studied at both Purdue and Princeton University. Earning no degrees, the young author cemented his memory and place in the society of higher education on his popularity alone—being familiar with several clubs, the college theater and voted “most popular” in the class of 1893. His writing career began just six years later with his debut novel, The Gentleman from Indiana and from there, Tarkington would enjoy two decades of critical and commercial acclaim. Coming to be known for his romanticized and picturesque depiction of the Midwest, he would become one of only four authors to win the Pulitzer Prize more than once for The Magnificent Ambersons (1918) and Alice Adams (1921), at one point being considered America’s greatest living author, comparable only to Mark Twain. While in the later half of the twentieth century Tarkington’s work fell into obscurity, it is undeniable that at the height of his career, Tarkington’s literary work and reputation were untouchable.