David Lloyd Agency.

Pearl S. Buck was born Pearl Comfort Sydenstricker on June 26, 1892, in Hillsboro, West Virginia. While still an infant, she moved to eastern China with her Presbyterian missionary parents, Absalom and Caroline (Stulting) Sydenstricker. She was educated by her mother and a Chinese tutor until the Boxer Rebellion forced her family to flee to Shanghai, where she attended boarding school. Buck credited her tutor and her immersion in Chinese culture as shaping her perception and understanding of China, which influenced her literary works. Buck continued her education at Randolph Macon Woman's College in Lynchburg, Virginia, and obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1914. She taught psychology for a few months there before returning to China to care for her ailing mother. In 1917, she married John Lossing Buck, an agricultural expert stationed in northern China. While living there, Buck became familiar with Chinese peasant families and their daily lives, but also noticed a strong divide between whites and the Chinese. She used her observations to pen non-fiction articles about Chinese daily life, which were published in American magazines.

In 1925 Buck returned to America to seek care for her daughter, Carol, who was severely retarded, and in 1926 she received an MA from Cornell. Upon returning to China, she continued writing and published her first novel, East Wind, West Wind, in 1930. In 1931, Buck published The Good Earth, her most famous novel, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932 and the Howells Medal in 1935, and which was adapted into a MGM film in 1938. In 1938, she also became the first American woman to receive the Nobel Prize for literature. Before her death, Buck published over 70 books, including novels, poetry, biographies, and dramas and collections of stories. In all of her works, she sought to bridge the cultural gap between Asia and the West.

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