Edna Ferber

(1887-1968) Edna Ferber was an American novelist and playwright whose camera-like regional descriptions and vigorous portraiture of ordinary men and women made her one of the most popular authors of the early 20th century. Her first professional writing was done for newspapers in Wisconsin and later, Chicago. In 1911, she began publishing fiction, with initial fame coming from a series of short stories about Emma McChesney, a traveling saleswoman. In 1925, Miss Ferber won a Pulitzer Prize for her novel So Big (1924). Her other novels include Dawn O’Hara (1919), The Girls (1921), Show Boat (1926), Cimarron (1930), Come and Get It (1934), Saratoga Trunk (1941), Giant (1952), and Ice Palace (1958). With George S. Kaufman, she co-authored some of the most successful plays of the period: THE ROYAL FAMILY (1927), DINNER AT EIGHT (1932), STAGE DOOR (1936) and THE LAND IS BRIGHT (1941).  Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern famously adapted Ferber’s SHOW BOAT into a landmark musical in 1927.