| − | '''Pearl S. Buck''' (born Pearl Sydenstricker, 1892-1972) was a novelist and teacher who spent much of her life in China; she learned Chinese before English but won the 1938 [[Nobel Prize]] in literature for her English novels. Her novel ''The Good Earth'' (1931), about the travails and triumphs of Chinese peasants, won the Pulitzer Prize and became a worldwide best-seller and the basis of a popular film. Her writing is simple and vivid, full of telling details and minute observations that bring her subjects to life. She published ninety books, many of them best-sellers, fifteen of them Book-of-the-Month Club selections. She wrote novels, short stories, plays, translations (from the Chinese), biography, autobiography, children's literature, essays, and poetry. Her work was translated into 145 different languages and dialects. | + | '''Pearl S. Buck''' (born Pearl Sydenstricker, June 26, 1892 - March 6, 1973) was a novelist and teacher who spent much of her life in China; she learned Chinese before English but won the 1938 [[Nobel Prize]] in literature for her English novels. Her novel ''The Good Earth'' (1931), about the travails and triumphs of Chinese peasants, won the Pulitzer Prize and became a worldwide best-seller and the basis of a popular film. Her writing is simple and vivid, full of telling details and minute observations that bring her subjects to life. She published ninety books, many of them best-sellers, fifteen of them Book-of-the-Month Club selections. She wrote novels, short stories, plays, translations (from the Chinese), biography, autobiography, children's literature, essays, and poetry. Her work was translated into 145 different languages and dialects. |
| | In 1992, historian James C. Thomson Jr. called Buck "the most influential Westerner to write about China since 13th-century Marco Polo." | | In 1992, historian James C. Thomson Jr. called Buck "the most influential Westerner to write about China since 13th-century Marco Polo." |