The Edna Ferber novel that won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1925 was So Big.
So Big was published in 1924 and centers on Selina Peake DeJong, a schoolteacher who becomes a farmer’s wife in a Dutch-American community south of Chicago. After her husband dies, Selina works to keep the farm going and secure a future for her son, Dirk, whom she nicknames “So Big.”
Ferber’s story contrasts Selina’s appreciation of beauty and art with Dirk’s pursuit of money and status. The novel was inspired by the Dutch farming community of South Holland, Illinois, and became a major commercial success, selling hundreds of thousands of copies.
At the time of the award, the category was still called the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel; it was renamed the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1948. Ferber’s later books Show Boat, Cimarron, and Giant are frequent quiz distractors, but none was her 1925 Pulitzer winner.