The greatest influence on writer Pearl Buck's career was the time she spent in China, first with her missionary parents and later with her husband. Out of her experiences came the primary focus of her best work, including her first novel, The Good Earth, which became an instant best-seller at its publication in 1931 and eventually claimed a Pulitzer Prize. Her subsequent fictional explorations of China also drew much attention and praise, but it was the pair of biographies of her parents-The Exile and Fighting Angel-that became a decisive factor in winning Buck the Nobel Prize in literature in 1938.

The author of more than seventy books, Buck devoted much of her later life to bettering East-West relations. To that end, she founded the East-West Association in 1941.

Buck's portraitist, Vita Solomon, described Buck at the time of her sittings as "an interesting compromise of youth and age." Etched on the glass to Buck's right in the picture is a monogram of the writer's maiden name in Chinese characters.