Good Earth

The Good Earth is a Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Pearl S. Buck, an American writer who spent the bulk of the first part of her life in China. Set in the Anhui Province where Buck once lived, it chronicles the rise and fall of Wang Lung and his family, portraying a realistic portrait of life in a Chinese Village prior to World War I. While not initially well received by critics, the novel immediately became a bestseller and has since been recognized as one of the most important 20th century works of fiction. It was also notable for its role in preparing the American public to accept the Chinese as allies later during World War II. The novel was followed by two sequels, Sons and A House Divided to complete the House of Earth Trilogy. -

First published by John Day in 1931 in brown cloth and a tan dustwrapper with a simple scene of a furrowed field topped by a sun printed in brown ink, the first edition of this understated tome simply states the copyright date with no mention of subsequent printings. The first issue contains the phrase "For the John Day Publishing Company, Inc." on the copyright page, while the second state simply says "John Day Company" and is in fact more rare. There has also been some debate about the presence of either a brown or green topstain as being a point of issue, but that remains inconclusive.The original typed manuscript, which Buck wrote in 1929 while living in Nanking, was reportedly stolen in 1952 from an exhibit at the American Academy of Arts and Letters. It resurfaced in 2007 at auction and was reclaimed by the FBI. 

Also of note, signed limited edition was reissued by John Day in 1965 in commemoration of the author's eightieth birthday, limited to 1000 copies.