The Magnificent Ambersons

Name: The Magnificent Ambersons
Rating: 3.667 (3 reviews)
ISBN: 9781513125039

By Booth Tarkington & Mint Editions

Publisher Description

Winner of the 1919 Pulitzer Prize, Booth Tarkington’s The Magnificent Ambersons is a grand historical drama and social history of the United States that follows the story of the Amberson family’s financial decline at the start of the Industrial Age.

Once upon a time in a small—but upscale—Indianapolis town, an American family built a dynasty. For generations, the Ambersons stood unchallenged as the most prominent and powerful family in the region until the turn of the century and the coming of the industrialists. The Ambersons, now centered on the patriarch’s grandson, George, enter a previously unheard of time in which their family name holds little value. Unable or perhaps unwilling to change, George experiences first hand why doing things is better than simply being things. Professionally typeset with a beautifully designed cover, this edition of The Magnificent Ambersons is a classic of American literature, reimagined for modern readers.

Since our inception in 2020, Mint Editions has kept sustainability and innovation at the forefront of our mission. Each and every Mint Edition title gets a fresh, professionally typeset manuscript and a dazzling new cover, all while maintaining the integrity of the original book.

With thousands of titles in our collection, we aim to spotlight diverse public domain works to help them find modern audiences. Mint Editions celebrates a breadth of literary works, curated from both canonical and overlooked classics from writers around the globe.

Download the free Fable app

Stay organized

Keep track of what you’re reading, what you’ve finished, and what’s next.

Build a better TBR

Swipe, skip, and save with our smart list-building tool

Rate and review

Share your take with other readers with half stars, emojis, and tags

Curate your feed

Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communities

Stay organized

Keep track of what you’re reading, what you’ve finished, and what’s next.

Build a better TBR

Swipe, skip, and save with our smart list-building tool

Rate and review

Share your take with other readers with half stars, emojis, and tags

Curate your feed

Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communities

The Magnificent Ambersons Reviews

3.5

Lauren Ignet

Created about 3 years ago

Kamryn Koble

Created over 3 years ago

“The greatest tragedy of this book is the misleading first chapter. If a writer was to mail this into a publisher today, it would never make it out of the sludge pile simply because of the way it’s introduced: no characters, no plot, or anything of relative importance to a novel is shown in those imperative few first pages. If I wasn’t reading this because I had to, I would have been much wearier and probably abandoned The Magnificent Ambersons because it opens as a history textbook; however, ends as a tragically bittersweet story with many wonderful merits to it. Goodreads summarizes the novel with, “Set in the Midwest in the early twentieth century—the dawn of the automobile age—the novel begins by introducing the richest family in town, the Ambersons. Exemplifying aristocratic excess, the Ambersons have everything money can buy—and more. But George Amberson Minafer—the spoiled grandson of the family patriarch—is unable to see that great societal changes are taking place, and that business tycoons, industrialists, and real estate developers will soon surpass him in wealth and prestige. Rather than join the new mechanical age, George prefers to remain a gentleman, believing that “being things” is superior to “doing things.” But as his town becomes a city, and the family palace is enveloped in a cloud of soot, George’s protectors disappear one by one, and the elegant, cloistered lifestyle of the Ambersons fades from view, and finally vanishes altogether.” What sticks out the most to me as I was annotating was the fantastic vocabulary. I consider myself a lover of words, and I defined many each chapter that I had never come across in all of the novels I’ve read. Some of the slang could be a little tiresome, but the Barnes and Noble edition often helps with that. Due to the fact I was reading that version, the allusions (particularly to singers/important people of the time and Shakespeare) were also pointed out, and greatly enriched the text for they would have gone over my head without them. If you tackle this classic, I would recommend this version. The end felt a bit incomplete to me, but the incredible growth that Georgie, the main character, went through throughout the novel was rather interesting. He went from a pretentious boy with long curls who told ministers to “go to hell,” to a young man so crippled by the changes of his town and family that there was hardly a glimmer of life left in a once boisterous person. Along with Tarkington’s impeccable word choice, the writing style was so wonderful that it made it easier to gloss over some of the [what I deemed] unnecessary details. It wasn’t too fluffy, but the characters had distinct voices and the novel contained some profound quotes that I couldn’t leave without highlighting. In conclusion, pushing through the slow beginning of The Magnificent Ambersons is largely worth it for a novel that can be taken as a story of a once-glamorous family, or as a much larger criticism of society as Tarkington intended it. I recommend reading the Barnes and Noble edition and keeping a dictionary handy for this work of literature.”

Drewnieslanik

Created almost 6 years ago

About Booth Tarkington

Booth Tarkington (1869 - 1946) was an American novelist and dramatist, known for most of his career as “The Midwesterner.” Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, Tarkington was a personable and charming student who studied at both Purdue and Princeton University. Earning no degrees, the young author cemented his memory and place in the society of higher education on his popularity alone—being familiar with several clubs, the college theater and voted “most popular” in the class of 1893. His writing career began just six years later with his debut novel, The Gentleman from Indiana and from there, Tarkington would enjoy two decades of critical and commercial acclaim. Coming to be known for his romanticized and picturesque depiction of the Midwest, he would become one of only four authors to win the Pulitzer Prize more than once for The Magnificent Ambersons (1918) and Alice Adams (1921), at one point being considered America’s greatest living author, comparable only to Mark Twain. While in the later half of the twentieth century Tarkington’s work fell into obscurity, it is undeniable that at the height of his career, Tarkington’s literary work and reputation were untouchable.