Pearl S. Buck.

Born in Hillsboro, West Virginia on June 26, 1892, Pearl S. Buck spent most of her childhood in China, where her parents served as Christian missionaries. Educated at home by her mother, she later attended school in Shanghai before returning to the United States for college. She earned degrees from Randolph–Macon College and Cornell University, where she studied psychology.

Buck’s first major success came with The Good Earth 1931, a novel about Chinese peasant life that won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932 and was adapted into a 1937 film. She continued to write about China with works like Dragon Seed 1942, also made into a 1944 film starring Katharine Hepburn. In 1938, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, citing her rich and epic descriptions of peasant life in China. Under the pen name John Sedges, she also wrote several novels exploring American themes.

Buck married agricultural economist John Lossing Buck in 1917; they divorced in 1935. That same year, she married publisher Richard John Walsh, with whom she remained until his death in 1960. She had ten children: one biological daughter, Caroline Grace Buck, born in 1920 with developmental disabilities; an adopted daughter, Janice, with her first husband; and eight other children adopted during her second marriage. Her brother Edgar Sydenstricker was a noted public health statistician.

Buck’s novels, especially The Good Earth, continue to be widely read for their authentic portrayal of Chinese rural life before World War II. She was a charter member of the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1973 and was honored on a 5-cent US postage stamp in 1983. Through the Pearl S. Buck Foundation, she championed humanitarian causes, including supporting children with disabilities. She is most remembered as the first American woman to win both the Pulitzer and Nobel Prizes for Literature.