Thomas Clayton Wolfe (1900-1938) wrote four autobiographical works that have made him an American literary legend. Wolfe was born in Asheville, North Carolina on October 3, 1900, the youngest of eight children. Wolfe attended private school before he went to the University of North Carolina at the age of 16. He wrote for school publications and edited the college newspaper, the Tar Heel. His first published works were two poems in the University of North Carolina Magazine in December, 1917. Professor Frederich Koch encouraged WolfeÃ?¢??s work with the theater, and when Wolfe graduated he departed for Harvard University to study the discipline. Following graduation and an additional workshop year at Harvard, Wolfe was unable to have his plays put into circulation. So, from 1924 until 1930, he taught English at New York University.

During Thomas WolfeÃ?¢??s tenure at New York University, he traveled abroad. During a vacation in London he met Aline Bernstein, a much older and married woman. Their love affair provided emotional and financial support, and in 1929 he published his first novel, Look Homeward, Angel. He dedicated the book to Aline. In 1930 Wolfe was awarded a Guggenheim Scholarship and he traveled to Europe for a year, during which time he broke off his affair with Berstein. When Wolfe returned stateside he rented an apartment in Brooklyn, and relied heavily on his relationship with Maxwell Perkins, the famous ScribnerÃ?¢??s editor. His second novel, Of Time and the River, was published in 1935, the same year as a collection of short stories From Death to Morning. 

In the late 1930s, Wolfe traveled west and contracted a complex case of pneumonia. He was admitted to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, and doctors found WolfeÃ?¢??s brain stricken by tuberculosis. On September 15, 1938, Wolfe passed away, and he was buried in Riverside Cemetary, Asheville, North Carolina. He left behind a vast manuscript, which provided the material for his posthumous works The Web and the Rock (1939), You CanÃ?¢??t Go Home Again (1940), and The Hills Beyond (1941). In addition to his novels, Wolfe published a number of short stories and poems during his lifetime.

Articles About Wolfe, Thomas

Thomas Wolfe's Dixieland - Thomas Wolfe's Old Kentucky Home	November 27, 2007
The Old Kentucky Home, known as "Dixieland" in the novel Look Homeward Angel by Thomas Wolfe, is located at 48 Spruce Street in downtown Asheville. The novel is autobiographical and Wolfe presents Dixieland more as a prison than a home, which has the protagonist, Eugene Gant, by the soul. Wolfe had a love hate relationship with the house, his family and the town.
Thomas Wolfe's Angel	November 27, 2007
In the novel, Look Homeward Angel, Thomas Wolfe described the stone statue of an angel, which stood for years on the porch of his father's tombstone shop at 28 Park Square in Asheville:
Rest Thomas Wolfe - Thomas Wolfe's Grave	February 4, 2007
Thomas Wolfe was stricken with an influenza while traveling in the Pacific Northwest. Wolfe told his doctors he believed that he became sick while on a July 4th cruise to Vancouver on the Canadian Pacific steamship, Princess Kathleen. On the ship, he shared a drink of whisky with a shivering man, whom he would later call "a poor shivering wretch." The next day he became very sick and decided to make his way back to Seattle.