By FREDA R. SAVANA
The Intelligencer
The original, typewritten manuscript of “The Good
Earth,” Pearl S. Buck's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel,
has been recovered more than 40 years after it went
missing, the FBI announced Tuesday.
Details on how and where it was found will be
discussed at a press conference today in
Philadelphia.
The manuscript, written in 1931, has been missing
since at least 1966 and is considered priceless,
according to the FBI.
Other documents and correspondence owned or written
by the Bucks County author were also found.
Buck, who became the first American woman to win the
Nobel Prize for literature in 1938, moved to Hilltown
Township in 1935. Her home on Dublin Road is a
National Historic Landmark.
In 1949, she founded Welcome House there, an agency
to find adoptive homes for bi-racial children who
were considered un-adoptable at the time because of
their mixed ethnicity.
During the last 20 years or so of her life, she
established the Pearl S. Buck Foundation to continue
her humanitarian work finding homes for children from
around the world.
Now known as Pearl S. Buck International, it fulfills
three functions, according to its Web site.
The organization provides adoption services, child
sponsorships and cross-cultural education.
“The Good Earth” is the first book in a trilogy that
includes “Sons,” written in 1932, and “A House
Divided,” written in 1935.
Buck, who moved to China at the age of 3 months and
lived there for four decades, centered the “The Good
Earth” on family life in China. The story follows the
rise and fall of Wang Lung's family as they move from
their farm to the city.
The acclaimed author died in 1973 in Danby, Vt., at
the age of 80.
Freda R. Savana can be reached at (215) 345-3061 or
fsavana@phillyBurbs.com.
June 27, 2007 6:03 AM
http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/113-06272007-1369529.html
