Thomas Wolfe

Thomas Wolfe was the youngest of eight children born in Asheville, North Carolina. His father was a stone-carver and made gravestones, while his mother bought and sold houses, later becoming successful in the real estate business. Wolfe lived in what is now the Thomas Wolfe Memorial House until he went to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. While in college, he aspired to be a playwright and wrote many plays which he and his friends staged themselves. After receiving his bachelor’s degree, he went on to Harvard to continue his playwrighting studies. His plays were so lengthy that they were never published or performed, so Wolfe decided to pursue fiction instead. Wolfe’s first novel, Look Homeward, Angel, was edited by Maxwell Perkins, a prestigious editor at the time, who significantly shortened the manuscript. The novel was a combination of fiction and autobiography and included details of his family and the Asheville community at the time of his childhood. Wolfe went on to have a close and complicated relationship with Maxwell Perkins, at times blaming him for over-editing his work and other times crediting him for his literary success. Wolfe continued to write while teaching English at New York University. He died before he was 38 from miliary tuberculosis that had spread through his brain. He is regarded as one of the greatest American writers for his bold style and for pioneering autobiographical fiction.