Stribling, T. S. (1881-1965), was an American author known for his fiction about the South. His major work is a trilogy of novels about several generations of the Vaiden family of Alabama, who rise from poverty to wealth. The novels cover the period from before the American Civil War (1861-1865) until the 1930’s. The trilogy consists of The Forge (1931), The Store (1932), and Unfinished Cathedral (1934). The Store won the 1933 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
Thomas Sigismund Stribling was born on March 4, 1881, in Clifton, Tennessee. He graduated from the University of Alabama in 1905 with a law degree and practiced law for less than one year before turning to writing full-time.
Stribling contributed short stories to periodicals before he began to write novels. From 1908 to 1917 he traveled in Europe and South America and lived in several U.S. cities, which provided the background for his adventure stories and novels. His first major novel was Birthright (1922). Stribling’s adventure novels include Fombombo (1923), Red Sand (1924), and Strange Moon (1929). His novels Teeftallow (1926) and Bright Metal (1928) are set in Tennessee. He satirized law and politics in The Sound Wagon (1935) and life at a Northern university in These Bars of Flesh (1938). Stribling also wrote stories about an amateur detective named Henry Poggioli. He died on July 8, 1965.
