Pearl Sydenstricker Buck was born to Absolom and Carie Sydnestricker in Hillsboro, West Virginia. Her parents were Presbyterian missionaries who brought her to Chinkiang, China when she was still very young. There, she learned Chinese as her first language.

(Pearl, Absalom, Grace, and Carrie with Wang, the children's governess, behind them)

As a child, Pearl was educated in China, where she learned English. Later she moved to the United States to study at Randolph-Macon Woman's College in Lynchburg, Virginia. She went on to study at Cornell University to receive an MA in English.

Pearl returned to China to teach literature at several Chinese universities. In the mean time, she started her writing career. Pearl wrote 85 works during her life and is still the most widely translated author today. She wrote fiction, non-fiction, juveniles, books of opinion on social issues of the orient and the biographies of her parents.

By1938 Pearl received the Nobel prize for literature and had become a world renowned writer. She also was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the William Dean Howell's Award.

During her lifetime, Pearl had one child with her first husband, John Lossing Buck. She later divorced him and married Richard J. Walsh, her publisher. She went on to adopt five children in her home in Pennsylvania. This gave rise to her starting an adoption agency for Amerasian children and the Pearl S. Buck foundation. (Buck 313)

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