Pearl Buck Biography and List of Works

One of the most popular American authors of her day, crusader for women's rights, editor of Asia magazine, philanthropist, noted for her novels of life in China. Pearl S. Buck was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938. The decision of the Swedish Academy caused controversy, especially among critics who believed that although Buck was a capable popular novelist, she lacked the stature the Nobel Prize was intended to confirm.

"One does not live half a life in Asia without return. When it would be I did not know, nor even where it would be, or to what cause. In our changing world nothing changes more than geography. The friendly country of China, the home of my childhood and youth, is for the time being forbidden country. I refuse to call it enemy country. The people in my memory are too kind and the land too beautiful."
(from A Bridge for Passing, 1963)

Pearl Buck was born in Hillsboro, West Virginia. She spent her youth in China, in Chinkiang on the Yangtse River. She learned to speak Chinese before she could speak English. Her parents were missionaries. Buck's father, Absalom Sydenstricker, was a scholarly man who spent years translating the Bible from Greek to Chinese. Her mother, the former Caroline Stulting, travelled widely in her youth and had a fondness for literature. Buck's life in China was not always pleasant. When only a child, the family was forced to flee from the rebel forces of the Boxer Rebellion.

After being educated by her mother and by a Chinese tutor, who was a Confucian scholar, Buck was sent to a boarding school in Shanghai (1907-09) at the age of fifteen. Her education then continued in the United States at Randolp-Macon Women's College in Virginia, where she studied psychology. After graduating in 1914, she returned to China as a teacher for the Presbyterian Board of Missions. Her mother was seriously ill and Buck spent two years taking care of her. She married Dr. John Lossing Buck, an agricultural expert and after her mothers recovery they settled in a village in the North China.

Buck worked as a teacher and interpreter for her husband and travelled through the countryside. In the 1920s they moved to Nanking, where she taught English and American literature at the university. In 1924 she returned to the United States to seek medical care for he first daughter who was mentally retarded. In 1926 she received her M.A. in literature from Cornell University.

The Bucks went back to China in 1927. During the civil war they were evacuated to Japan. In 1935 Buck divorced her first husband and married her publisher and the president of the John Day Company, Richard Walsh, with whom she moved to Pennsylvania.

As a writer Buck started with the novel EAST WIND: WEST WIND (1930), which received critical recognition. She had earlier published autobiographical writings in magazines and a story titled 'A Chinese Woman Speaks' in the Asia Magazine. Her breakthrough novel, THE GOOD EARTH appeared in 1931. The novel's style, a combination of biblical prose and the Chinese narrative saga, increased the dignity of its characters. The book gained a wide audience, and was made into a motion picture.

In 1936 Buck was made a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and in 1951 she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. During World War II she lectured and wrote on democracy and American attitudes toward Asia. Buck understood through personal experience the problems of the two words, and of the relationships between men and women of different races .Indeed,one of the recurring themes In her books is interracial love. In THE ANGRY WIFE (1949) the love between Bettina, a former slave, and Tom, a Southerner who fought for the army of the North, tears an old family to shreds. In THE HIDDEN FLOWER (1952) a Japanese family is distraught when the daughter falls in love with an American soldier.

Buck and Walsh were both active in humanitarian causes through the East and West Association, which was devoted to mutual understanding between the peoples of Asia and the United States, Welcome House, and The Pearl Buck Foundation.

After the communist revolution in China, Buck became disillusioned about the opportunities for international cooperation. THE PATRIOT (1939) depicts the emotional development of a university student, who moves from a position of communist idealism to a rejection of the philosophy when he sees its brutality in war. Buck gradually shifted her activities to a lifelong concern for children. Her family included nine adopted children as well as her biological daughters. THE CHILD WHO NEVER GREW (1950) tells the personal story of her own daughter, whose mental development stopped at the age of four. The subject is also dealt with in Buck's famous novel The Good Earth.

Buck died on March 6, 1973 in Danby, Vermont,she was eighty years old. Her manuscripts and papers are at the Pearl S. Buck Birthplace Foundation, Hillsboro, West Virginia and the Lipscomb Library of Randolph-Macon Women's College, Lynchburg, Virginia.

"I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in human beings. Like Confucius of old, I am so absorbed in the wonder of earth and the life upon it that I cannot think of heaven and the angels... If there is no other life, then this one has been enough to make it worth being born, myself a human being."
(from Buck's religious credo, summoned up in 1939)

During her forty year career as an author, Buck published eighty works, including novels, plays, short story collections, poems, children's books, and biographies. She also wrote five novel under the name John Sedges and translated Lo Guangzhong's (1330-1400) The Water Margin / Men of the Marshes, which appeared in 1933 under the title All Men Are Brothers. The book depicts the adventures of outlaws and was banned by Quing rulers. COMMAND THE MORNING (1959) concerns the efforts of the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb and the ethics of dropping it on Japan. THE CHINESE NOVEL (1939) was largely an explanation of her own writing style.

For further reading: Pearl S. Buck by Kang Liao (1997); Pearl S. Buck: A Cultural Biography by Peter Conn (1996); World Authors 1900-1950, ed. by M. Seymour-Smith and A.C. Kimmens (1996); The Several Worlds of Pearl S. Buck, ed. by Elizabeth J. Lipscomb (1994); Pearl S. Buck: Good Earth Mother by W. Sherk (1992); Pearl Buck. A Woman in Conflict by N.B. Stirling (1989); Pearl S. Buck: The Final Chapter by Beverly E. Rizzon (1988); The Lives of Pearl Buck by I. Block (1973); Pearl S. Buck by P. Doyle (1980; Pearl S. Buck: A Biography by T. Harris (1971); Pearl S. Buck by T.F. Harris (1969); Pearl S. Buck by P.A. Doyle (1965); The Image of the Chinese Family in Pearl Buck's Novels by C. Doan (1964).

The Good Earth (1931) - The novel sold 1,800,000 copies in its first year. It has been translated into more than thirty languages and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1932. It follows the life of Wang Lung, from his beginnings as an impoverished peasant to his eventual position as a prosperous landowner. The story begins when Wang Lung collects a slave, O-lan, from the prosperous house of Hwang. O-lan's parents sold her to Hwang because they were poor and needed money. According to an old Chinese custom, Wang Lung's and O-lan's marriage is pre-arranged. The fiancée is not beautiful, she is humble but shares with him the devotion to land, to duty, and to survival.Their first year is happy: the crop is good and they have two sons. Then the crops fails, and O-lan gives birth to a girl. The family moves to the south, and the man abandons the plan to sell the child. Revolution breaks out, houses are plundered and Wang Lung gets in his possession a silver treasure. The family moves back to their home region. Wang Lung buys land and soon owns the house of now impoverished Hwang. The only problem is their retarded child, a girl, who doesn't speak. O-lan gives birth to twins, a boy and a girl. The elder boys go to school. Wang Lung buys another wife, Lotus. O-lan is not well after the birth of the twins, and she dies after the wedding of her elder sons. In his old age, Wang Lung gives his love to a young slave girl, who also takes care of the retarded girl. His youngest son moves from the house to become a soldier and because he also loves the young slave girl. Old Wang Lung witnesses for his sorrow that his sons do not share his unyielding devotion to the land. - Buck combines descriptions of marriage, parenthood, and complex human emotions with depictions of Chinese reverence for the land and for a specific way of life. - The novel was followed by two sequels, SONS (1932), which focuses on the youngest son, Wang the Tiger, and A HOUSE DIVIDED (1935), which is Yuan's story. The three novels were published in 1935 in one volume as THE HOUSE OF EARTH. At her death Buck was working on 'The Red Earth', a further sequel to The Good Earth, presenting the modern-day descendants of that novel's characters.

Note: Only nine women have received (1901-1997) the Nobel Prize for Literature: Selma Lagerlöf, Sigrid Undset, Pearl S. Buck, Gabriela Mistral, Nelly Sachs, Toni Morrison, Nadine Gordimer, Wislawa Szymborska.

EAST WIND, WEST WIND, (1930)
THE GOOD EARTH, (1931)
SONS, (1932)
THE YOUNG REVOLUTIONIST, (1932)
EAST AND WEST AND THE NOVEL, (1932)
IS THERE A CASE FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS?, (1932)
transl. ALL MEN ARE BROTHERS by Shui Hu Chan, (1933)
THE FIRST WIFE AND OTHER STORIES, (1933)
MOTHER, (1934)
A HOUSE DIVIDED, (1935)
THE EXILE, (1936)
FIGHTING ANGEL: PORTRAlT OF A SOUL, (1936)
THIS PROUD HEART, (1938)
THE PATRIOT, (1939)
FLIGHT INTO CHINA, (1939)
THE CHINESE NOVEL, (1939)
OTHER GODS, (1940)
STORIES FOR LITTLE CHILDREN, (1940)
OF MEN AND WOMEN, (1941)
TODAY AND FOREVER, (1941)
WHEN FUN BEGINS, (1941)
DRAGON SEED, (1942)
AMERICAN UNITY AND ASIA, (1942)
FREEDOM FOR ALL, (1942)
THE CHINESE CHILDREN NEXT DOOR, (1942)
THE PROMISE, (1943)
TWENTY-SEVEN STORIES, (1943)
THE WATER BUFFALO CHILDREN, (1943)
THE DRAGON FISH, (1944)
THE STORY OF DRAGON SEED, (1944)
WHAT AMERICA MEANS TO ME, (1944)
SUN YAT SEN, (1944)
CHINA TO AMERICA, (1944)
PORTRAIT OF A MARRIAGE, (1945)
WILL THIS EARTH HOLD?, (1945)
THE FIRST WIFE, (1945)
TALK ABOUT RUSSIA, (1945)
TELL THE PEOPLE: TALKS WITH JAMES YEN ABOUT THE MASS EDUCATION MOVEMENT, (1945)
TELL THE PEOPLE: MASS EDUCATION IN CHINA, (1945)
ed.: CHINA IN BLACK AND WHITE, (1945)
YU LAN, (1945)
PAVILLION OF WOMEN, (1946)
FAR AND NEAR, (1947)
HOW IT HAPPENS, (1947)
PEONY, (1948)
THE BIG WAVE, (1948)
THE ANGRY WIFE, (1949)
AMERICAN ARGUMENT, (1949)
THE LONG LOVE, (1949)
THE CHILD WHO NEVER GREW, (1950)
ONE BRIGHT DAY, (1950)
GOD'S MEN, (1951)
THE HIDDEN FLOWER, (1952)
BRIGHT PROCESSION, (1952)
ONE BRIGHT DAY, (1952)
COME MY BELOVED, (1953)
VOICES IN THE HOUSE, (1953)
THE MAN WHO CHANGED CHINA, (1953)
MY SEVERAL WORLDS, (1954)
JOHNNY JACK AND HIS BEGINNINGS, (1954)
THE BEECH TREE, (1954)
IMPERIAL WOMAN, (1956)
FRIEND TO FRIEND, (1958)
AMERICAN TRIPTYCH: THREE 'JOHN SEDGES' NOVELS, (1958)
DESERT INCIDENT, (1959)
COMMAND IN THE MORNING, (1959)
THE DELIGHTS OF LEARNING, (1960)
CHRISTINE, (1960)
THE CHRISTMAS GHOST, (1960)
SATAN NEVER SLEEPS, (1961)
FOURTEEN STORIES, (1961)
A BRIDGE FOR PASSING, (1962)
HEARTS COME HOME, (1962)
screenplay: THE BIG WAVE, (1962)
THE LIVING REED, (1963)
THE JOY OF CHIDREN, (1964)
WELCOME CHILD, (1964)
STORIES OF CHINA, (1964)
ESCAPE AT MIDNIGHT AND OTHR STORIES, (1964)
THE BIF FIGHT, (1965)
CHILDREN FOR ADOPTION, (1965)
THE GUIDE, (1965)
THE GIFTS THEY BRING, (1965)
ed.: FAIRY TALES OF THE ORIENT, (1965)
screenplay: THE GUIDE, (1965)
THE LITTLE FOX IN THE MIDDLE, (1966)
DEATH IN THE CASTLE, (1966)
THE PEOPLE OF JAPAN, (1966)
MY MOTHER'S HOUSE, (1966)
FOR SPACIOUS SKIES, (1966)
THE TIME IS NOON, (1967)
MATTHEW, MARK, LUKE,AND JOHN, (1967)
TO MY DAUGHTERS, WITH LOVE, (1967)
THE NEW YEAR, (1968)
THE PEOPLE OF CHINA, (1968)
THE GOOD DEED, (1969)
THREE DAUGHTERS OF MADAME LIANG, (1969)
MANDALA, (1970)
THE KENNEDY WOMEN, (1970)
CHINA AS I SEE IT, (1970)
THE STORY BIBLE, (1971)
THE CHINESE STORY TELLER, (1971)
PEARL BUCK'S AMERICA, (1971)
ORIENTAL COOCKBOOK, (1972)
ONCE UPONA CHRISTMAS, (1972)
A COMMUNITY SUCCESS STORY, (1972)
CHINA PAST AND PRESENT, (1972)
THE GODDESS ADIBES, (1972)
MRS STARLING'S PROBLEM, (1973)
A GIFT FOR THE CHILDREN, (1973)
THE RAINBOW, (1974)
ed.: PEARL S. BUCK'S BOOK OF CHRISTMAS, (1974)
WORDS OF LOVE, (1974)
EAST AND WEST, (1975)
SECRETS OF THE HEART, (1976)
THE LOVERS AND OTHER STORIES, (1977)
MRS STONER AND THE SEA, (1978)
THE WOMAN WHO WAS CHANGED, (1979)