The Winning of Barbara Worth was published by the Book Supply Company in 1911, and it is Wright’s most serious attempt at a social novel — a book that addresses real economic and political issues (irrigation, land speculation, corporate exploitation of the West) while wrapping them in a romantic plot designed to make the medicine go down.
The setting is the Imperial Valley (renamed “The King’s Basin” in the novel) during the period when the Colorado Desert was being transformed into agricultural land through irrigation. The conflict is between two approaches to development: the honest, community-minded approach of Jefferson Worth (a local businessman who wants to develop the land for the benefit of its settlers) and the exploitative approach of James Doolittle Greenfield (an Eastern capitalist who wants to extract maximum profit regardless of the human cost). Barbara, Jefferson’s adopted daughter, must choose between two suitors who represent the same conflict in personal terms.
Wright researched the novel extensively, spending time in the Imperial Valley and studying the engineering of its irrigation systems. The technical descriptions of dam-building and canal construction are unusually detailed for a popular novel, and Wright uses them to argue that the transformation of the desert is a heroic achievement that deserves to benefit the people who do the work rather than the speculators who finance it.
Collecting The Winning of Barbara Worth
First edition (Book Supply Company, Chicago, 1911): Cloth binding.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $60–$200
- Without jacket: $10–$30
- Film tie-in edition (1926): $15–$40