Theodore Pratt : A Florida Writer's Life

The author of fifteen books set in the Sunshine State, Theodore Pratt (1901-1969) enjoyed an unofficial title of “Literary Laureate of Florida” in the middle of the twentieth century. His writings particularly capture the culture of south Florida, most famously in his “Florida Trilogy”—beginning with his most famous book, The Barefoot Mailman (1943), and running through The Flame Tree (1948) and The Big Bubble (1949)— which covers south Florida’s transition from early pioneering days to glittering playground of the wealthy. Along with the trilogy, he wrote powerfully of the Florida Keys in Mercy Island (1941), the Everglades in Escape to Eden (1953), and Chief Osceola in an outdoor drama and novel both entitled Seminole (1953/1954). Pratt conducted research for his books that resulted in an archive useful to researchers today and a story/essay collection, Florida Roundabout (1959), that provides a deeply revealing portrait of poor whites in the state.

This biography brings Pratt’s life and career to Florida enthusiasts, educators, the young writers he targeted, and literary scholars who focus on southern literature, Florida literature, and middlebrow twentieth-century American film and literature. Written as a narrative in reader-friendly prose, the biography captures the nostalgia of vintage Florida, promising appeal to general readers.