Thomas Wolfe – 1900-1938
A native of Asheville, North Carolina, Wolfe tried unsuccessfully to become a playwright, then turned to fiction, creating in a very short time four long novels that were based in large part on his own coming of age. Lyrical, rhapsodic, and epic, Wolfe’s fiction deals with time and memory as well as growing up in America. William Faulkner thought him the greatest novelist of his generation—rating himself second.