'Seventeen: A Tale of Youth and Summer Time and the Baxter Family Especially William' is a 1917 novel about 17-year-old William Sylvanus Baxter. It takes place in the Midwest just before World War I and satirises first love. 'Seventeen' was first published in part in the Metropolitan Magazine, before coming out as a collected volume, and becoming a bestselling novel in the United States.
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Booth Tarkington (1869-1946) was an American novelist and dramatist. Originally from Indianapolis, he attended both Purdue University and Princeton, as well as getting an honorary doctorate from Columbia. His family was well-off, though they lost some of their wealth in the Panic of 1873 (the Great Depression).
He won the Pulitzer Prize twice, for 'The Magnificent Ambersons' (1918) and 'Alice Adams' (1921), making him one of only three to win it more than once, putting him alongside William Faulkner and John Updike. Whilst he is less known today, he was considered to be America's greatest living author during the early 20th century.