GOOD EARTH
UNEARTHED
Buck’s Missing Manuscript
Recovered
06/27/07
|
Pearl
S. Buck's The
Good Earth won a Pulitzer
Prize and led to a Nobel Prize in Literature
for the author in 1938. The original
manuscript had been missing for decades. |
In a 1966 memoir, author Pearl S. Buck
lamented the loss of an original typewritten
copy of her Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The
Good Earth. “The devil has it,” Buck
said. “I simply cannot remember what
I did with that manuscript.”
Four decades later, mystery solved: we
have recovered the priceless manuscript—which
was later reported stolen—along with
a trove of Buck letters and other materials.
Philadelphia Special Agent Robert K. Wittman,
the senior investigator of our Art Crime
Team, gave credit to a local auction house. “We’ve
worked hard to establish a good relationship
with this auction house—one of many
we work with in this city and around the
country,” Wittman said today during
a press conference announcing the recovery. “They
call us if they come across something ‘iffy’.”
In this case, that something was a 1950s
era straw suitcase full of original Buck
documents, including the lost manuscript,
one of two copies Buck said she wrote on
a typewriter over three months while she
lived in China. The person brought the items
to the auction house for appraisal and sale.
Recognizing their potential historical significance,
the auction house contacted us and Buck’s
estate.
The anonymous individual, who will not
be charged with any federal crime, agreed
to release the documents to us. We will retain
possession of the documents until the rightful
owner has been determined.
The other items recovered include:
- A 1933 bound edition of The Good
Earth with pencil editing for republication
in the trilogy House of Earth;
- A typewritten and edited original forward
for House of Earth;
- The original letter in which Buck indicated
her intentions to give her manuscripts
to her husband Richard J. Walsh for safekeeping
and his acceptance;
- A typewritten autobiographical sketch
with pencil editing;
- A file folder labeled “Famous
Letters” containing approximately
100 letters to Buck from such luminaries
as President Harry S. Truman, First Lady
Eleanor Roosevelt, Supreme Court Justice
William O. Douglas, and Indian Prime Minister
Jawaharlal Nehru.
The story of the disappearance. It
goes back to 1952, when the manuscript—typed
in 1930 or ’31 and hand-edited—was
part of a trove of Buck documents included
in a display at the American Academy of Arts
and Letters museum in New York.
“The whole shebang disappeared sometime
after the exhibit was taken down, but nobody
realized it was missing right away,” Wittman
said. The recovered items included the museum
exhibit card, suggesting that the collection
brought to the auction house represents the
missing exhibit. “The artifacts are
valued at more than $150,000,” he said.
Buck’s heirs reported the manuscript
stolen in the 1970s.
Buck won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction
in 1932 for The Good Earth, a novel
of peasant life in pre-Communist China. The
book was later adapted for the screen and
won two Oscars. Buck was the first American
woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature,
awarded in 1938 for her “epic descriptions
of peasant life in China and for her biographical
masterpieces,” according to the Nobel
Foundation.
Resources:
- Press
release
-
Art Theft Program
-
Art Theft Stories