FERBER, EDNA

born Aug. 15, 1887, Kalamazoo, Mich., U.S. died April 16, 1968, New York, N.Y. American novelist and short-story writer who wrote with compassion and curiosity about Midwestern American life. Ferber grew up in her native Kalamazoo, Michigan, and in Appleton, Wisconsin. She began her career at 17 as a reporter in Appleton, later working for the Milwaukee Journal. Her early stories introduced a traveling petticoat saleswoman named Emma McChesney, whose adventures are collected in several books, including Emma McChesney & Co. (1915). Ferber's characters are firmly tied to the land, and they experience conflicts between their traditions and new, more dynamic trends. Although her books are somewhat superficial in their careful attention to exterior detail at the expense of profound ideas, they do offer an accurate, lively portrait of middle-class Midwestern experience in 1920s and '30s America. After So Big (1924), for which she won a Pulitzer Prize, and Show Boat (1926), which became a popular play, critics hailed Ferber as the greatest woman novelist of the period. Her novels Cimarron (1930), Saratoga Trunk (1941), Giant (1952), and Ice Palace (1958) were all made into motion pictures. Her autobiographies, A Peculiar Treasure (1939) and A Kind of Magic (1963), evince her genuine and encompassing love for America. She was associated with the Algonquin Round Table of literary wits, and she collaborated with George S. Kaufman on a number of plays, including Dinner at Eight (1932) and Stage Door (1936). Additional reading Julie Goldsmith Gilbert, Ferber (1978), is a biography by the author's grandniece.