Buck, Pearl S. (1892-1973), an American author, won the 1938 Nobel Prize for literature. She became best known for her books dealing sympathetically with life in China. Many of her works urged greater understanding between the peoples of Asia and the West.
Buck’s best-known novel, The Good Earth (1931), won the 1932 Pulitzer Prize. It describes the life of Wang Lung, a Chinese peasant, whose love of the land sustains him through years of hardship. The book is the first in a series of three novels called The House of Earth, which also includes Sons (1932) and A House Divided (1935).
Pearl Sydenstricker was born on June 26, 1892, in Hillsboro, West Virginia. She grew up in China, where her parents were missionaries. She attended college in the United States but returned to China to teach. In 1917, she married John Buck, a U.S. agricultural expert living in China. They were divorced in 1935. That year, she married Richard John Walsh.
Pearl Buck’s first book of fiction, East Wind: West Wind, was not published until 1930, when she was 38. But from that time until her death, she wrote more than 100 books, as well as hundreds of short stories and essays. Her other novels set in the Far East include Dragon Seed (1942), Imperial Woman (1956), and The Living Reed (1963). She also wrote five novels with an American setting under the name John Sedges. Buck wrote two autobiographical works, My Several Worlds (1954) and A Bridge for Passing (1964). She died on March 6, 1973. Buck’s novel The Eternal Wonder was published in 2013.
