Show Boat: A Facsimile of the 1926 Edition

Although she is somewhat neglected today, for more than three decades Edna Ferber was considered one of America's premiere authors. While her work included short stories and theatre, she was most famous for her novels, most of which focused on strong women coping with errant men in panoramic settings. SHOW BOAT was one of her first great successes. Today the story is better known through its musical theatre incarnation and the film versions the stage show generated, including the 1936 version directed by James Whale and starring Irene Dunne and the 1951 version directed by George Sidney and starring Katherine Grayson. But while the stage and screen versions have their charms, none really captures the epic nature of Ferber's novel, which is as much about America as it is about the story of post-Civil War show folk who ply their trade on "The Cotton Blossom"--a floating theatre that travels the nation's waterways, most particularly the mighty Mississippi. The story concerns three generations of women: Parthenia Hawks, a ram-rod upright New Englander who heartily disapproves of her husband's decision to purchase a show boat and involve the family with actors, God forbid; her daughter Magnolia, whose fresh beauty eventually propells her fame as one of the most popular actresses on the river; and her granddaughter Kim, who becomes a Broadway star. But the backbone of the story concerns Magnolia's ill-fated love for ne'er-do-well gambler Gaylord Ravenal, a love that tests her strength to the last degree. Just as Magnolia has to change to meet her constantly shifting circumstances, so is the nation changing around her, gradually shifting from a rather innocent, rural society to a much more hardened and sophistocated urban world. And Magnolia's adventures will take her from the savage natural beauty of the mighty Mississippi to the gambling dens and brothels of 'Gilded Age' Chicago to the jumpiness of the 1920's 'Great White Way' of New York. Ferber was more of a popular than a literary writer, and her style here is very much of the 1910s and 1920s--but her prose is strong and clean, her imagery is magnificent, and as she tells her episodic story of a life and a nation in transition she weaves a number of interesting threads into the tapestry: the poverty of the beaten South, racial oppression, social caste, hypocrisy, and changing tastes in fashion and art. And always, always there is the great river: indifferent to the humanity that clings to its banks and travels its back, by turns placid and savage, graceful and dangerous. Ultimately the river becomes a metaphor for both the rapid changes in America and for the often dangerous power of love, and unlike the stage and film versions there will be few happy endings for the characters as they are swept through life's torrent very much as the Cotton Blossom is swept along the currents. It is a memorable package, and while Ferber would go on to write a great many other novels (including the famo

The popularity of the Kern-Hammerstein musical, academia's refusal to include the work in the "canon" of regularly-taught American novels, the popular assumptions about the novel's datedness, sentimentality and racial stereotypes--these are some of the factors that have contributed to the comparative neglect of one of the most original, engaging narratives by an American novelist. The so-called "modernist" tradition is one that casts suspicion upon any narrative that might be termed "melodramatic" in its plotting, tone and style. It's true that Ferber plays out the emotions of her characters, but she's equally adept at keeping those emotions in play. Her voice is so vital and strong, her narrative so multilayered in its social-psychological-cultural-archetypal meanings, that an open-minded reader cannot fail to become swept up in the force of her storytelling. Moreover, in her characterization of Magnolia, who defends her unstable marriage against her daughter's staid one and who prefers the tenderloin districts to the churches and parks of Chicago, Ferber reveals the subversiveness of a true artist, making the reader question common assumptions about the dual gods of "success" and "progress." The river and the theater are not only Ferber's favorite settings but her metaphors for exploring the life of consciousness and explaining the forces that shape personality. Even when Gaylord and Magnolia abandon the river and take up residence in Chicago, the river lives in them, exposing by its constantly-felt presence what is alive and dead, what is enduring and transitory. Magnolia's daughter and her husband, the "new" American theater of New York, the "reformed" Chicago--all these are condemned less in the surface narrative than in the energy Ferber brings to the subjects that are closer to her heart: characters and places whose life traces its wellsprings to the river. This is melodrama ("music drama') in the best sense of the word--Ferber's prose evoking the musical elements that invest the narrative with fullness and necessity. The African-American spirituals and folk songs that provide Magnolia's education in turn inform the reader of her values and understandings through the course of her life's journey. Moreover, the narrative's movement matches the river's: it creates unexpected channels, moving forward in time, then backward, a device that enables the narrative to provide a perspective on the past as something familiar, as a place we already know and treasure, a "spot of time" we've been missing and to which we wish to return. But the melodrama also works here because Ferber constantly blurs the line between theater and life, letting us in on the "backstage" action that goes into playing a role and preparing a face. Magnolia blossoms only when she is on the stage, and Gaylord is never closer to authenticity than when he becomes an actor long enough to woo and marry Magnolia. Because Ferber presents her characters as deliberately ass

My mother said I'd love this book when I was a youngster. She was right. I am horrified that most libraries in this area do not have at least one copy of Edna Ferber's masterpiece. I had to come online to order this story which I shall pass on to my child.

Show Boat tells an fresh, inviting story of life here and there -- from the rivertown touring life to the life of a gambler's wife living in Chicago. This is the type of book that draws you into it; you'll not want to put it down until the last page, and then you'll want it to go on, and tell more and more of the saga of the Hawk family... and the immortal Cotton Blossom.

This is a rich and wonderful family saga set in the world of Missisippi show boats, turn of the century Chicago, and the Broadway theater scene of the 1920's.It is the source of the famous stage and movie musical and anyone who has enjoyed those versions will love this book.However, the novel, is much richer in scope and ultimately more moving than the musical. The ending has hung with me for days since I finished reading it. In 1927 Oscar Hammerstein II felt the public would not accept a musical in which many of the main charachters died before the end (as they do in the novel). And for the times, perhaps he was right. But it is a shame because the musical could have had even more impact if he had been able to stay closer to his source. I highly recommend this book.