"The Magnificent Ambersons" is a 1918 novel written by Booth Tarkington, which won the 1919 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It is the second novel of his trilogy called Growth.
The story is set mainly in a fictionalized version of Indianapolis and was greatly inspired by the neighbourhood of Woodruff Place. "The Magnificent Ambersons" chronicles the changing fortunes of three generations of an American dynasty, the aristocratic Amberson family. The protagonist of Booth Tarkington's great historical drama is George Amberson Minafer, the spoiled and arrogant grandson of the founder of the family's magnificence. Eclipsed by a new breed of developers, financiers, and manufacturers, this pampered scion begins his gradual descent from the midwestern aristocracy to the working class.
Today "The Magnificent Ambersons" is best known through the 1942 Orson Welles movie.
