Background
He was born July 29, 1869, in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States. The son of John S. Tarkington and Elizabeth Booth Tarkington. He was named after his maternal uncle Newton Booth, then the governor of California.
He was born July 29, 1869, in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States. The son of John S. Tarkington and Elizabeth Booth Tarkington. He was named after his maternal uncle Newton Booth, then the governor of California.
He attended Phillips Exeter, Purdue, and Princeton, where his artistic versatility was demonstrated by college success in music, drawing, and writing. This ability he soon applied more specifically to literature as a profession.
His first novel, The Gentleman from Indiana (1899), concerning a country editor's crusade against corrupt politics, is one of his best; but it was the second, Monsieur Beaucaire (1900), a pseudo-historical romance, that secured his reputation. Of some thirty other novels, the outstanding are The Conquest of Canaan (1905); Penrod (1914), Penrod and Sam (1916), and Seventeen (1916), all humorous pictures of the American adolescent; and The Magnificent Ambersons (1918) and Alice Adams (1921), studies of social and economic forces.
Tarkington was generally faithful to Middle Western actuality, but his realism is sentimental and given to flattering the popular faith in the eventual triumph of virtue. His plots are commonly subordinated to the analysis of character. Tarkington tried other genres, but without notable success. In the Arena (1905) is a collection of stories about political life; Looking Forward (1926), a book of essays; and The World Does Move (1928), a volume of reminiscences. Tweedles (1923), written in collaboration with Harry Leon Wilson, is the best known of his plays.
In 1930 Tarkington lost his sight, which was later partially restored. He spent his winters in Indianapolis and his summers in Kennebunkport, Maine, where his beached schooner, the Regina, served as a workshop.
Tarkington was married to Louisa Fletcher from 1902 until their divorce in 1911. Their only child, Laurel, was born in 1906 and died in 1923. He married Susanah Keifer Robinson in 1912. They had no children.