Show Boat Book download in PDF, ePub & Mobi
by Edna Ferber
Fiction Historical Fiction Racial Prejudice Love Family Dynamics Social Change
Show Boat is a novel written by Edna Ferber and published in 1926.
The book tells the story of three generations of artists in a floating theater on a steamboat called the Cotton Blossom, which travels between small towns on the banks of the Mississippi River.
The story takes place between the 1880s and 1920s, moving from the Reconstruction Era to Gilded Age Chicago and Roaring Twenties New York, finally returning back to the Mississippi River at the end of the story.
The book begins when Captain Andy and his wife Parthy Ann arrive in town on their show boat Cotton Blossom for a performance. There, his daughter Magnolia meets a handsome gambler, Gaylord Ravenal, and they both fall in love at first sight.
Bizarre as was the name she bore, Kim Ravenal always said she was thankful it had been no worse. She knew whereof she spoke, for it was literally by a breath that she had escaped being called Mississippi.
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Copyright info
Show Boat by Edna Ferber is believed to be in the public domain in the United States only. It may still be copyrighted in other countries. If you are not in the United States, please check your local laws to ensure this eBook is in the public domain in your country before downloading Show Boat in PDF or ePub.
WHY READ SHOW BOAT IN 2025?
99 years later, still timelyA floating theater carries a family through changing America—glamour, grind, and the color line backstage. Performance meets cost, on and off the stage.
A rich pick for discussions of representation and labor. Touring life mirrors the gig economy, while the novel examines race, romance, reinvention, and the price of applause.
Backstage world
Cue calls, costumes, river towns.
Family & troupe
Found kin under the footlights.
Art and justice
Entertainment that reckons with history.
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About Edna Ferber
Ambition and place in clean American prose; big characters with civic scale.
We have 2 books by Edna Ferber in the AliceAndBooks library
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The best Show Boat quotes
And in the stillness of the room you heard the roar and howl and crash of the great river whose flood had caught them land shaken them and brought Magnolia Ravenal to bed ahead of her time.
But always, to her, red and green cabbages were to be jade and burgundy, chrysoprase and prophyry. Life has no weapons against a woman like that.
'I may not know much' — another form of locution often favored by her. The tone in which it was spoken utterly belied the words; the tone told you that not only did she know much, but all.
He's going for the adventure of it. They always have, no matter what excuse they've given, from the Holy Grail to the California gold fields. The difference in America is that the women have always gone along.
Bizarre as was the name she bore, Kim Ravenal always said she was thankful it had been no worse.