Knowra James A. Michener James A. Michener James A. Michener (1907–1997) was an American novelist and short-story writer known for expansive historical fiction that traces the development of regions and peoples across generations.
Tales of the South Pacific : A 1947 collection of linked stories about American service members and island communities during World War II. This Pulitzer Prize-winning book established Michener through connected stories drawn from his wartime experience.
Doylestown, Pennsylvania : A borough in southeastern Pennsylvania and the county seat of Bucks County. Michener grew up in Doylestown, which later became a setting for his novel The Fires of Spring.
John D. MacDonald : An American novelist known for crime fiction, especially the Travis McGee series. MacDonald encouraged Michener to turn his wartime material into stories for publication.
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction : An annual American literary award for distinguished fiction published in the United States. Michener won the 1948 prize for Tales of the South Pacific.
Short story : A prose narrative substantially shorter than a novel, usually centered on a limited set of events. Michener began with linked stories, but became best known for novels spanning generations.
Hawaii : A 1959 novel tracing Hawaii's history through the lives of families from different cultures. Its deep-time structure exemplifies Michener's method of narrating a place through successive generations.
Swarthmore College : A private liberal arts college in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, founded in 1864. Michener graduated from Swarthmore in 1929 and later taught there.
Maxwell Perkins : An influential American book editor who worked with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe. Perkins edited Tales of the South Pacific for publication at Macmillan.
South Pacific : A 1949 Broadway musical by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, based on Michener's stories. Its success brought Michener's Pacific settings to a vast theater audience.
Historical novel : A novel whose plot and characters are situated in a past historical period. Michener's regional epics are a distinctive, place-centered form of historical novel.
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