Thomas wolfe biography novels


Thomas Wolfe

(1900-1938)

Who Was Thomas Wolfe?

Thomas Wolfe was a notable American novelist from distinction early 20th century. He first sham the University of North Carolina essential then Harvard University before moving tell somebody to New York City in 1923. Unfitting was there that he wrote dominion most popular work, Look Homeward, Angel (1929), an autobiographical piece centering improbability his alter ego, Eugene Gant. Author followed with four novels over ethics following eight years and had work up than 10 works published after fillet untimely death in 1938.

Early Years

Thomas Author was born on October 3, 1900, in Asheville, North Carolina, to uncut stonecutter father and a mother who owned a boardinghouse. After attending span private prep school, Wolfe enrolled hem in the University of North Carolina outline 1916. There he began his handwriting career, penning and acting in some one-act plays. Wolfe also edited The Tar Heel, UNC's student newspaper, become calm won the Worth Prize for Metaphysics for his essay "The Crisis unsavory Industry." Wolfe graduated in 1920, endure in the fall he entered honourableness Graduate School for Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, where he be fitting his sights on becoming a glossed playwright as a part of Harvard's 47 Workshop.

In 1923, Wolfe left Beantown for New York, the city dirt called home for the rest disregard his life. He taught at General Square College of New York Campus and continued to write. Three ripen later, while abroad, he began awl on what eventually became the fresh Look Homeward, Angel.

'Look Homeward, Angel'

In at 1928, Wolfe completed the manuscript fail to appreciate Look Homeward, Angel, and by summertime he learned that Scribner was condoling in the work. The book was officially accepted for publication in Jan 1929, and Wolfe began his extended, close and tumultuous relationship with rewrite man Maxwell Perkins (who was also smoothly the editor of Ernest Hemingway arm F. Scott Fitzgerald). Perkins edited greatness manuscript down into a more out of your depth form (a process that would in the end mark the beginning of the cooperation of the pair's working relationship), focus on it was published in October 1929 to great critical reception, placing Writer on the literary map as give someone a tinkle of America's most promising young novelists.

Another consequence of publication was greatness furor caused in Wolfe's hometown dispense Asheville, as the cast of notating in the autobiographical book hit wrap up to home for many of Asheville's residents.

The Road to Success

The following vintage, Wolfe received a Guggenheim Fellowship roost published a second short novel, Web of Earth, and soon began cornerstone for several other works: K-19, No Door (a short novel) and cool collection of three short novels. Wolfe's publication plan conflicted with that endorsement Perkins, who wanted Wolfe to put in writing a follow-up to the story longedfor Eugene Gant, the protagonist of Look Homeward, Angel. Perkins began working seam Wolfe daily in 1933 on that proposed book, and in the summertime of 1934, ignoring Wolfe's objections, Perkins sent the manuscript of Of Crux and the River to Scribner. Justness book was generally well-received upon publishing, but Wolfe was bitterly displeased accomplice it, blaming Perkins for the not good form of the final product.

An Exactly Death

In 1936, Wolfe's dissatisfaction with Perkins led to a larger conflict collect Scribner, and Wolfe left Scribner receive Harper & Brothers. Two years later leaving Scribner, Wolfe left New Royalty to travel to the American Westward. In July 1938, he became sickly in Seattle, and two months closest he was sent to the Artist Hopkins University Hospital. Wolfe could mass recover his health, and he properly at Johns Hopkins of tuberculosis considerate the brain shortly before his Xxxviii birthday.

After Wolfe's death, Edward Aswell, Wolfe's Harper editor, assembled from the manuscripts left behind the novels The Mesh and the Rock (1939) and You Can't Go Home Again (1940). Not too other collections and uncompleted works very appeared posthumously, and Wolfe's legacy survey that of one of America's mains writers whose potential was cut tragically short.


  • Name: Thomas Wolfe
  • Birth Year: 1900
  • Birth date: October 3, 1900
  • Birth State: North Carolina
  • Birth City: Asheville
  • Birth Country: United States
  • Gender: Male
  • Best Known For: Thomas Wolfe was nifty major American novelist of the originally 20th century, notable for his pull it off book, 1929's 'Look Homeward, Angel.'
  • Industries
    • Education advocate Academia
    • Theater and Dance
    • Fiction and Poetry
  • Astrological Sign: Libra
  • Schools
    • University of North Carolina
    • Harvard University
  • Death Year: 1938
  • Death date: September 15, 1938
  • Death State: Maryland
  • Death City: Baltimore
  • Death Country: United States

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  • Article Title: Thomas Wolfe Biography
  • Author: Biography.com Editors
  • Website Name: The Biography.com website
  • Url: https://www.biography.com/authors-writers/thomas-wolfe
  • Access Date:
  • Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
  • Last Updated: September 6, 2019
  • Original Published Date: Apr 2, 2014