SHOW BOAT
$12.75
Skip to product information
SHOW BOAT is a 1926 novel by American author and dramatist, Edna Ferber, first published by Doubleday. It chronicles the lives of three generations of performers on the Cotton Blossom, a floating theater on a steamboat that travels between small towns along the banks of the Mississippi River, from the 1880s to the 1920s. The story moves from the Reconstruction Era riverboat to Gilded Age Chicago to Roaring Twenties New York and finally returns to the Mississippi River. The mix of romance, realistic depiction of racial issues, and nostalgia for a vanishing American past was an immediate hit with the public, and the novel was number one on the bestseller lists for twelve weeks. The critical reception was more cautious but still positive.
SHOW BOAT was adapted as a Broadway musical in 1927 by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II. Three films followed: a 1929 version that depended partly on the musical and two full adaptations of the musical in 1936 and 1951.
SHOW BOAT
$12.75