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Sample Autograph Signature:
Pearl S. Buck
American Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winning author, humanitarian, and philanthropist. Pearl Sydenstricker Buck was born in 1892 in Hillsboro, West Virginia, and raised in eastern China by her Presbyterian missionary family. Her father was so dedicated that the family lived with, and dressed like, the local peasants and Pearl Buck learned to speak Chinese before English. She graduated with honors from Randolph-Macon Women’s College in Lynchburg, VA in 1914 and shortly thereafter returned to China to care for her ailing mother. There she met John Lossing Buck, an American agricultural missionary, whom she married in 1917. Although she was later divorced and remarried, she retained the name Buck professionally. In 1922, Buck began writing articles and short stories about China for U.S. magazines and in 1930 her first novel was published. The publication of her next novel, The Good Earth, transformed her life. Heading the best-seller lists for months, The Good Earth sold nearly two million copies, was translated into more than thirty languages, inspired a 1932 Broadway play, and won the 1932 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. In 1937, it was made into a movie, as would be several of her later novels. During the 1930’s, her marriage deteriorated, primarily because of her increasing fame and her involvement with her publisher, Richard Walsh, who she married in 1935, and she returned permanently to live in the United States. In 1938, Buck became the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize for literature, awarded for her earlier portrayals of China and for her biographies of her parents. When the U.S. entered World War II, Buck devoted energy to supporting United China Relief, providing data for servicemen's Asian guidebooks, and writing radio scripts for broadcast in China. She also tried to impart knowledge of Asia through the East and West Association, which she founded in 1941 to bring Asian cultural figures to the United States. She also directed the publication of Asia magazine from 1941 to 1946. After the war, in a move to aid illegitimate children of U.S. servicemen in Asian countries, she instituted the Pearl S. Buck Foundation (now Pearl S. Buck International). Between 1945 and 1953, she also wrote five novels set on the American frontier under the pseudonym John Sedges. The first of these works, The Townsman, won both popular and scholarly acclaim for its accurate depiction of Kansas in the 1850's. For the remainder of her life she continued to be a prolific writer and raised nine adopted children from various racial backgrounds. She continued to write about China, interracial marriages, historical novels, short stories, children’s books, non-fiction, and three works of autobiography. The majority of her papers, letters, and manuscripts are housed at the Pearl S. Foundation International, based near Philadelphia, PA. A large collection of translations of her works are housed at Princeton University, as well as letters and legal documents from the period 1928-1950’s, when the David Lloyd Literary Agency was her agent.
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