 First Edition | |
| Author | Julia Peterkin |
|---|---|
| Published | 1928 |
Scarlet Sister Mary is a 1928 novel by Julia Peterkin. It won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1929. The book was called obscene and banned at the public library in Gaffney, South Carolina. The Gaffney Ledger newspaper, however, serially published the complete book. Dr. Richard S. Burton, the chairperson of Pulitzer's fiction-literature jury, recommended that the first prize go to the novel Victim and Victor by John Rathbone Oliver. His nomination was superseded by the School of Journalism's choice of Peterkin's book. Evidently in protest, Burton resigned from the jury.
Ethel Barrymore had the dramatic rights to the novel,[1] and in 1930 starred on Broadway in a blackface performance, whose cast included Estelle Winwood, Ted de Corsia, Marjorie Main and Barrymore's teenaged daughter, Ethel Barrymore Colt, in her stage debut.[2]
- ^ "Ethel Barrymore has Peterkin Novel Play". New York Times. 14 June 1929. p. 19.
- ^ J. Brooks Atkinson (26 November 1930). "Colored Sister Barrymore". New York Times. p. 19.