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Edna Ferber Biography
Edna Ferber (August 15, 1885-April 16, 1968), author

Edna Ferber was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan on August 15, 1885. She would become a leading female American author who wrote a number of successful books, as well as plays.

Her novels generally featured a strong female as the protagonist, although she fleshed out multiple characters in each book. She usually highlighted at least one strong secondary character who faced discrimination ethnically or for other reasons; this enabled her to show that people are people, and that often the non-pretty have the best character.

Due to her imagination in scene, characterization, and plot, several movies have been made based on her works: Show Boat (a musical featuring Paul Robeson's marvelous rendition of "Old Man River"), Giant (starring Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, and James Dean), Saratoga Trunk , Cimarron (which won an Oscar).

In 1925, she won the Pulitzer Prize for her book So Big.

She was a member of the Algonquin Round Table, a group of wits who met for lunch every day at the Algonquin Hotel in New York.

Edna Ferber died on April 16, 1968, at her home in New York City. The New York Times said, "she was among the best-read novelists in the nation, and critics of the 1920s and '30s did not hesitate to call her the greatest American woman novelist of her day."

Partial bibliography
1911 Dawn O'Hara
1913 Roast Beef, Medium
1914 Personality Plus
1915 Emma Mc Chesney and Co.
1917 Fanny Herself
1918 Cheerful - By Request
1919 Half Portions
1921 The Girls
1922 Gigolo
1924 So Big
1926 Show Boat
1929 Cimarron
1931 American Beauty
1933 They Brought Their Women
1935 Come and Get It
1938 Nobody's in Town
1939 A Peculiar Treasure
1941 Saratoga Trunk
1941 No Room at the Inn
1941 The Land Is Bright (with G. S. Kaufman)
1945 Great Son
1949 Bravo (with G. S. Kaufman)
1952 Giant
1958 Ice Palace
1963 A Kind of Magic
 
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Edna Ferber.