According to Wikipedia: "Newton Booth Tarkington (July 29, 1869, Indianapolis – May 19, 1946) was an American novelist and dramatist best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning novels The Magnificent Ambersons and Alice Adams.... Much of Tarkington's work consists of satirical and closely observed studies of the American class system and its foibles. He himself came from a patrician family that came down in the world after the Panic of 1873. Today he is best known for his novel The Magnificent Ambersons, which Orson Welles filmed in 1942. It is included in the Modern Library's list of top-100 novels."