Death of Pearl S. Buck in Danby, Vermont

On March 6, 1973, Pearl S. Buck died of lung cancer in Danby, Vermont, at the age of eighty.[1][4]

By the time of her death, Buck had published more than seventy books—including novels, short-story collections, biographies, memoirs, children’s literature, translations, and essays—and had become one of the most widely read interpreters of China for Western audiences.[12][2]

Her passing marked the end of a career that had reshaped American literary and political culture: she was the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, a Pulitzer Prize laureate, and an outspoken advocate for civil rights, interracial understanding, and the rights of children born across national and racial boundaries.[1][11]

In her later decades, Buck had devoted increasing energy to humanitarian work, founding Welcome House and the Pearl S. Buck Foundation to support the adoption and welfare of Asian and mixed-race children often marginalized by law and prejudice.[12][7]

Her death prompted reassessments of her literary reputation, which had already begun to wane among critics, yet her influence endured through her institutions, her role in changing Western perceptions of China, and her early, public critiques of racism and sexism. The date March 6, 1973 is thus not only the endpoint of a remarkable life, but a marker in the history of women’s global literary and humanitarian leadership.[1][4]