Pearl Sydenstricker Buck (1892-1973)
- Born on June 26, 1892, in Hillsboro, West Virginia, Pearl Comfort Sydenstricker was raised in
Chenchiang in eastern China by her Presbyterian missionary parents.
- At first, Buck was educated by her mother and a Chinese tutor, but was sent at fifteen to a boarding school in Shanghai. Two years later she entered Randolph-Macon Woman's College in Virginia, graduating in 1914 and remaining for a semester as an instructor in psychology.
- In May 1917 she married missionary John L. Buck; although later divorced and remarried, she retained the name professionally.
- She returned to China and taught English literature in Chinese universities in 1925-1930. During that time she briefly resumed studying in the United States at Cornell University, where she earned her M.A. in 1926. She began contributing articles on Chinese life to American magazines in 1922.
- Buck wrote her first published novel, "East Wind, West Wind", in 1930 aboard a ship headed
for America. "The Good Earth", 1931, a poignant tale of a Chinese peasant and his slave-wife
and their struggle upward, was a best-seller, won a Pulitzer Prize and the Howells Medal, and
established Pearl S. Buck as an interpreter of the East to the West. The book was made into a stage play and
an Academy Award-winning film. With "Sons", 1932, and "A House Divided", 1935, it formed a
trilogy, "The House of Earth". Pearl Buck was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938.
- Later, she wrote biographies of her parents, "The Exile" and "Fighting Angel", both 1936, and a long series of novels and short story collections, including "The First Wife", 1933, "The Mother", 1934, "The Patriot", 1939, "Dragon Seed", 1942, "The Promise", 1943, "The Dragon Fish", 1944, "Pavilion of Women", 1946, "Peony", 1948, "Imperial Woman", 1956, "Letter from Peking", 1957, "The Living Reed", 1963, and "The Three Daughters of Madame Liang", 1969. She also published several novels under the pseudonym John Sedges, including a best-seller, "The Townsman", 1945. Buck wrote a number of children' s books and three volumes of autobiography, "My Several Worlds", 1954, "A Bridge for Passing", 1962, and "For Spacious Skies", 1966.
- Pearl S. Buck died in Danby, Vermont, on March 6, 1973.
