Pearl S. Buck
Hilltown Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Author of over 300 books and other published works, she strove for better understanding between peoples. Her novel "The Good Earth" was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1932. Her "epic portrayals of Chinese farm life" helped win her the Nobel Prize in literature in 1938. Following her many years in China, she lived after 1934 here at Green Hills Farm. It later became home to The Pearl S. Buck Foundation.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Pearl S. Buck spent much of her early life in China, the daughter of missionaries, and drew on that world to write novels that gave American readers an intimate, humane portrait of Chinese farm life. Her 1931 novel "The Good Earth" won the Pulitzer Prize and helped earn her the 1938 Nobel Prize in Literature—the first American woman so honored. After 1934 she settled at Green Hills Farm here in Bucks County, writing prolifically and championing international understanding and the welfare of children. The farm later became home to the foundation that bears her name.
Why it matters
Buck did more than perhaps any writer of her generation to build cultural bridges between East and West, and her humanitarian work on behalf of displaced and mixed-race children left a lasting mark.
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