Pulitzer Prize Winner Caroline Pafford Miller

Baxley’s Caroline Pafford Miller (1903-1992) was the first Georgian to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for a novel. The author was born in Waycross and spent her formative years in the South Georgia wiregrass country. She later moved into a home on Anthony Street in Baxley. Miller observed the people of the area and collected many stories about the pioneer life of yeoman farmers south of the Altamaha River. These stories contributed to Miller’s first novel, which was partly written at a favorite back table in the soda fountain of Barnes Drug Store. Lamb in His Bosom portrays the daily life and language of two rural families on their subsistence farms on the isolated Georgia frontier in the mid nineteenth century. The book was a bestseller and won the Pulitzer Prize for a novel in 1934. It went through at least 37 printings and was translated into several languages.