“On what novel is George Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess (1935) based? It is based on Porgy (1925), by Du Bose Heyward. Heyward and his wife, Dorothy, won a Pulitzer prize for their dramatic version of the novel. Porgy is a crippled beggar who lives on Catfish Row in Charleston, South Carolina. Bess is his drug-addicted mistress.”
Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
Mark's Text Terminal 