1. Thomas Wolfe is known largely for his first novel, Look Homeward, Angel, and for the short fiction that appeared during the last years of his life.
54 Facts About Thomas Wolfe
1. 2.
Thomas Wolfe was one of the pioneers of autobiographical fiction, and along with William Faulkner, he is considered one of the most important authors of the Southern Renaissance within the American literary canon.
3.
Thomas Wolfe has been dubbed "North Carolina's most famous writer".
4.
Thomas Wolfe is known for mixing highly original, poetic, rhapsodic, and impressionistic prose with autobiographical writing.
5.
Thomas Wolfe's books, written and published from the 1920s to the 1940s, vividly reflect on the American culture and mores of that period, filtered through Wolfe's sensitive and uncomfortable perspective.
6.
Thomas Wolfe had great influence on Jack Kerouac, and his influence extended to other postwar authors such as Ray Bradbury and Philip Roth, among others.
7.
Thomas Wolfe was born in Asheville, North Carolina, the youngest of eight children of William Oliver Thomas Wolfe and Julia Elizabeth Westall.
8.
Thomas Wolfe's father, of Pennsylvania Dutch descent, was a successful stone carver and ran a gravestone business.
9.
Thomas Wolfe "described the angel in great detail" in a short story and in Look Homeward, Angel.
10.
The angel was sold and, while there was controversy over which one was the actual angel, the location of the "Thomas Wolfe angel" was determined in 1949 to be Oakdale Cemetery in Hendersonville, North Carolina.
11.
Thomas Wolfe's mother took in boarders and was active in acquiring real estate.
12.
In 1906, Julia Thomas Wolfe bought a boarding house named "Old Kentucky Home" at nearby 48 Spruce Street in Asheville, taking up residence there with her youngest son while the rest of the family remained at the Woodfin Street residence.
13.
Thomas Wolfe lived in the boarding house on Spruce Street until he went to college in 1916.
14.
Thomas Wolfe was closest to his brother Ben, whose early death at age 26 is chronicled in Look Homeward, Angel.
15.
Julia Thomas Wolfe bought and sold many properties, eventually becoming a successful real estate speculator.
16.
Thomas Wolfe began to study at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill when he was 15 years old.
17.
Thomas Wolfe edited UNC's student newspaper The Daily Tar Heel and won the Worth Prize for Philosophy for an essay titled "The Crisis in Industry".
18.
Thomas Wolfe graduated from UNC with a bachelor of arts in June 1920, and in September, entered Harvard University, where he studied playwriting under George Pierce Baker.
19.
Thomas Wolfe later based the character of Francis Starwick in his semi-autobiographical novel Of Time and the River on Raisbeck.
20.
Thomas Wolfe studied another year with Baker, and the 47 Workshop produced his 10-scene play Welcome to Our City in May 1923.
21.
Thomas Wolfe visited New York City again in November 1923 and solicited funds for UNC, while trying to sell his plays to Broadway.
22.
Thomas Wolfe was unable to sell any of his plays after three years because of their great length.
23.
The Theatre Guild came close to producing Welcome to Our City before ultimately rejecting it, and Thomas Wolfe found his writing style more suited to fiction than the stage.
24.
Thomas Wolfe sailed to Europe in October 1924 to continue writing.
25.
In October 1925, she and Thomas Wolfe became lovers and remained so for five years.
26.
Thomas Wolfe returned to Europe in the summer of 1926 and began writing the first version of an autobiographical novel titled O Lost.
27.
Thomas Wolfe cut the book to focus more on the character of Eugene, a stand-in for Wolfe.
28.
Thomas Wolfe initially expressed gratitude to Perkins for his disciplined editing, but he had misgivings later.
29.
Thomas Wolfe chose to stay away from Asheville for eight years because of the uproar; he traveled to Europe for a year on a Guggenheim Fellowship.
30.
Some members of Thomas Wolfe's family were upset with their portrayal in the book, but his sister Mabel wrote to him that she was sure he had the best of intentions.
31.
Thomas Wolfe spent much time in Europe and was especially popular and at ease in Germany, where he made many friends.
32.
Thomas Wolfe returned to America and published a story based on his observations in The New Republic.
33.
Thomas Wolfe returned to Asheville in early 1937 for the first time since publication of his first book.
34.
In 1938, after submitting over one million words of manuscript to his new editor, Edward Aswell, Thomas Wolfe left New York for a tour of the Western United States.
35.
Thomas Wolfe wrote to Aswell that while he had focused on his family in his previous writing, he would now take a more global perspective.
36.
Complications arose, and Thomas Wolfe was eventually diagnosed with miliary tuberculosis.
37.
On his deathbed and shortly before lapsing into a coma, Thomas Wolfe wrote a letter to Perkins.
38.
Thomas Wolfe acknowledged that Perkins had helped to realize his work and had made his labors possible.
39.
Thomas Wolfe was buried in Riverside Cemetery in Asheville, North Carolina, beside his parents and siblings.
40.
Thomas Wolfe's was one of the most confident young voices in contemporary American literature, a vibrant, full-toned voice which it is hard to believe could be so suddenly stilled.
41.
Thomas Wolfe saw less than half of his work published in his lifetime.
42.
Margaret Wallace wrote in The New York Times Book Review that Thomas Wolfe had produced "as interesting and powerful a book as has ever been made out of the drab circumstances of provincial American life".
43.
Malcolm Cowley of The New Republic thought the book would be twice as good if half as long, but stated Thomas Wolfe was "the only contemporary writer who can be mentioned in the same breath as Dickens and Dostoevsky".
44.
Robert Penn Warren thought Thomas Wolfe produced some brilliant fragments from which "several fine novels might be written".
45.
Thomas Wolfe was ridiculed by such prominent critics as Harold Bloom and James Wood.
46.
Ernest Hemingway's verdict was that Thomas Wolfe was "the over-bloated Li'l Abner of literature".
47.
From this point on, positive re-assessment began to grow and current assessment of Thomas Wolfe tends to be more balanced, with a greater appreciation of his experimentation with literary forms.
48.
Thomas Wolfe is read more widely in high school and college literature courses then previously.
49.
Today, William Faulkner and Thomas Wolfe are considered the two most important authors of the Southern Renaissance within the American literary canon.
50.
Southerner and Harvard historian David Herbert Donald's biography of Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1988.
51.
Ray Bradbury was influenced by Thomas Wolfe, and included him as a character in his books.
52.
The Thomas Wolfe Society celebrates Wolfe's writings and publishes an annual review about Wolfe's work.
53.
Thomas Wolfe wrote "The Party at Jack's" while at the cabin in the Oteen community.
54.
The Thomas Wolfe Society, established in the late 1970s, issues an annual publication of Wolfe-related materials, and its journal, The Thomas Wolfe Review features scholarly articles, belles lettres, and reviews.