T.S. Stribling Books In Order

Publication Order of Henry Poggioli Books

Publication Order of The Vaiden Trilogy Books

Chronological Order of The Vaiden Trilogy Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas

Publication Order of Anthologies

T.S. Stribling was an American published author.

Thomas Sigismund Stribling was born March 4, 1881 and would pass away on July 8, 1965. He used the pen name T.S. Stribling for his stories.

He would practice law for a few years, passing the bar, but he fast turned his attention to writing. He had some early success with publishing, as his adventure stories passed the bar for pulp fiction magazines. From there, he expanded to his novels, some of them set in Tennessee and dealing with social satire.

He is perhaps best known for his Vaiden trilogy, which is set in Florence, Alabama. The Forge would come out in 1931, the first volume, and the second volume The Store earned him a Pulitzer Prize for the novel in 1933. The final volume in this series would be 1934’s The Unfinished Cathedral. The Literary Guilt has chosen the second and third volumes as part of its selections.

Stribling’s work proved so popular in the twenties and thirties that his books were adapted. His book Birthright was adapted in 1924 and 1939. The first film is lost and only part made it of the 1939 adaptation. His stories Teeftalow and Fobombo were adapted into plays under new titles and also made it to Broadway in 1928 and 1932.

Stribling was born in Clifton, Tennessee, a small town close to the Tennessee River. His father Christopher Columbus Stribling was a lawyer and he was his mother Amelia Ann’s first child with her husband. His father served the Union Army in the Civil War, while Amelia’s had served in the Confederate Army. The author said that this led him to be a ‘doubter and questioner’.

He would spend time with his mother’s parents in Lauderdale County, Alabama during the summer. Later, he placed many of his stories in Florence. He would also take inspiration from stories told by his parents and their relatives on both sides of the family to add depth to his South-set novels, many of which take place post-Reconstruction.

Stribling attended and graduated from Huntingdon Southern Normal University. He sold his first story at just 12 years old and earned five dollars for it. Once in his late teenage years, he was convinced that he should be a writer. Not long after, he served as editor for the Clifton News, a small weekly newspaper. After working there a year, he left to complete his education. He would graduate from the Florence Normal School (later University of North Alabama) in the autumn of 1902. He also earned a teaching certification in just a year thanks to his high school grades.

He moved to Tuscaloosa in 1903 for the purposes of teaching math and physical education at a job at Tuscaloosa High School. However, he only lasted one year before leaving. He decided to further his own education and got his law degree completed in 1905 at the University of Alabama School of Law. Stribling took the bar and passed it. but only used his degree for a short time after. He was a clerk for a law office and served as a practicing lawyer in Governor Emmett O’Neal’s Florence law office and was a lawyer at the John Ashcroft law office. However, he found himself using the typewriter to work on writing and gave up on practicing law in 1907.

He would then move to Nashville, Tennessee and got a job at the Taylor-Trotwood Magazine not just as a writer but selling ads and subscriptions. He had his work The Imitator and The Thrall of the Green published while at this job. He left the magazine in 1908 to move to New Orleans, where he began writing Sunday-School stories. He also became known for writing his adventure stories for boys, which came out in pulp magazines. He was also first able to live off the money he made from writing. He wrote detective stories for Adventure magazine which featured Doctor Poggioli, a psychologist and sleuth.

His novel The Cruise of the Dry Dock came out in 1917 with a limited run of 250 copies. It was influenced by his adventure writing for boys. It was set in World War 1 in the Sargasso Sea with tons of Germans, and an American crew tries to avoid being captured by the enemy. Meanwhile, his second novel came out in Century Magazine in seven parts and then in 1922 in book form. Birthright is the tale of a young African-American named Peter Siner who graduated from Harvard and went back to his hometown to hopefully teach at a college. It is a social critique in many ways, noting Jim Crow laws and segregation acts.

He also was traveling abroad quite a bit, which helped inform his adventure stories. He was inspired by his voyages to Venezuela to write 1923’s Fombombo, 1924’s Red Sand, and 1929’s Strange Moon. Each is set in Venezuela and explore the social and ethnic classes there, with plenty of adventure and romance.

Stribling would return his place setting to middle Tennessee for his 1926 novel Teeftallow and his 1928 novel Brightmetal. They see the South through the eyes of the people that live there, middle class and poor alike. His 11th novel would come out in 1931, The Forge. It was the first of three books that followed the Vaiden family through three generations. The book is set in Florence, Alabama and follows them from the Civil War to slave emancipation and post-Reconstruction all the way through to the twenties. It introduces characters that are featured in later stories but doesn’t have just one protagonist.

In 1931 he married Lou Ella Kloss, an old friend from his hometown and a music teacher. They moved to Clifton, Tennessee to live.

His 1932 novel is The Store, his most famous novel. It is the second book following The Forge in The Vaiden Trilogy and earned T.S. Stribling a Pulitzer Prize for the novel in 1933. It goes back to his character Col. Milt Vaiden, who is a businessman now established in Florence. The final book is The Unfinished Cathedral, which came out in 1934. It takes place in the twenties in Florence when there is an economic boom. Once more, the Vaiden family is heavily featured in the plot.

Check out the Vaiden Trilogy to find out all that happens The Forge, The Store, and The Unfinished Cathedral!