A Thomas Wolfe Annotated Bibliography

FEATURED AUTHOR A THOMAS WOLFE ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY Shawn Holliday Thomas Wolfe. Look Homeward, Angel: A Story ofthe Buried Life. New York: Scribner's, 1929. In his debut novel, a roman à clef, Wolfe depicts the development of Eugene Gant from birth to age twenty in the town of Altamont. Its characters and settings closely resembled Wolfe, his family, and the citizens ofAsheville, North Carolina. The book's autobiographical basis caused outrage in Asheville since many felt that Wolfe had aired the town's dirty laundry in public. ----------. Of Time and the River: A Legend ofMan's Hunger in His Youth. New York: Scribner's, 1935. This sequel to Look Homeward, Angel traces Eugene Gant's experiences as a graduate student at Harvard University, as a teacher in New York City and as an apprentice writer in England and France. A popular and financial success, the novel sold more than 40,000 copies in its first year. ----------. From Death to Morning. New York: Scribner's, 1935. Wolfe's first volume of short fiction collects thirteen stories that had been previously published in such magazines as Scribner's, Modern Monthly and TheNew Yorker. His tightly-structured novella, "The Web of Earth," which weaves mountain folklore, superstitions and myth in a firstperson Appalachian dialect, makes up the book's last ninety pages. ----------. The Story ofa Novel. New York: Scribner's, 1936. Originally delivered at the sixth annual Writer's Conference in Boulder, Colorado, and first published in The Saturday Review of Literature, this nonfiction bookrecounts OfTimeandtheRivers troubled 22 composition and editing. Because Wolfe admitted to needing Maxwell Perkins's help in preparing the novel for publication, this document is largely responsible for starting the author/editor controversies that surround Wolfe criticism to this day. ----------. The Web and the Rock. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1939. Wolfe's first posthumous novel portrays the experiences of George "Monk" Webber from his boyhood in Libya Hill and his struggles as a young writer to his affair with wealthy New Yorker Esther Jack and his trip abroad to France and Germany. Considered by many to be Wolfe's least successful novel, it was cobbled together by editor Edward C. Aswell from material left incomplete by Wolfe upon his death in 1938. Its last thirty-four chapters pick up where OfTime andthe River leaves off, albeit with Webber as Wolfe's new protagonist. ---------. You Can't Go HomeAgain. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1940. Wolfe's second posthumous novel depicts George Webber's experiences in depression-era New York and in pre-war Nazi Germany. It is significant for including two ofWolfe's most important novellas, "The Party at Jack's" and "I Have a Thing to Tell You," and for charting Wolfe's growing social conscience in its indictments of capitalism and fascism. The Hills Beyond. New York: Harper & Brothers, 194I. The last of Wolfe's books to be edited by Edward C. Aswell, it contains the unfinished Appalachian novel The Hills Beyond, which recounts the history and development of Libya Hill and old Catawba, as well as ten short stories, including "The Lost Boy," "Chickamauga" and "The Return of the Prodigal." It is also notable for including "A Note on Thomas Wolfe," Aswell's misleading commentary on the author and the state ofhis unfinished manuscripts. ----------. The Letters of Thomas Wolfe. Ed. Elizabeth Nowell. New York: Scribner's, 1956. Here, Wolfe's literary agent compiles the majority of his correspondence with friends, family, teachers, colleagues, and admirers. 23 Since many of the people Wolfe wrote to were still alive in 19s6, Nowell deleted much controversial material. Many of these letters, however, reappear unexpurgated in specific editions of Wolfe's letters such as Suzanne Stutmans My Other Loneliness: Letters ofThomas Wolfe andAline Bernstein. -. The Complete Short Stories ofThomas Wolfe. Ed. Francis E. Skipp. New York: Scribner's, 1987. This 600-page book collects all fifty-eight ofWolfe's short stories. ----------. The Good Child's River. Ed. Suzanne Stutman. Chapel Hill: University ofNorth Carolina Press, 1991. Based loosely on the childhood experiences of Aline Bernstein, Wolfe's Jewish lover, this unfinished novel portrays EstherJack's friends and family in New York at the beginning of the twentieth century. Written by Wolfe throughout...