| HOME |
| FRIENDS OF THOMAS WOLFE |
| VOLUNTEER |
| PHOTO GALLERY |
| VIRTUAL TOUR |
| VIDEO ROOM |
| PRESS ROOM |
| STUDENT WRITING WORKSHOPS |
| VISITOR CENTER |
HISTORY | CALENDAR | FOR TEACHERS |
AREA INFO | CONTACT US |
 |
|||||
Fact Sheet
| 1885 | William Oliver (W.O.) Wolfe marries Julia Elizabeth Westall. Their eight children are all born at the family home at 92 Woodfin Street in Asheville:
|
| 1904 | Tom, Ben, Grover, Fred, and Mabel all travel with their mother to the St. Louis World’s Fair, where Julia runs a boarding house called “North Carolina.” Grover contracts typhoid and dies at age 12. Tom later recounts his family’s memories of Grover in a novella called The Lost Boy. |
| 1906 | Tom begins attending grammar school at the Orange Street School in Asheville. Julia Wolfe purchases the “Old Kentucky Home” boarding house at 48 Spruce Street. She and six-year-old Tom move into it so she can run the business. |
| 1912 | Tom begins attending Asheville’s North State Fitting School, run by John and Margaret Roberts. Tom later refers to Margaret Roberts as “the mother of my spirit.” |
| 1916 | Tom leaves Asheville for Chapel Hill to attend the University of North Carolina (UNC). |
| 1917 | Tom meets Clara Paul, a young summer boarder at his mother’s boarding house. She inspires the character of “Laura James” in Look Homeward, Angel. |
| 1918 | Along with a schoolmate, Tom spends the summer working as a time checker and cargo loader at Langley Field in Newport News, Virginia. Later that year, he is called home from college because his brother Ben is gravely ill. Ben dies at 26 from influenza and pneumonia. |
| 1919 | The Return of Buck Gavin, Tom’s first play, is staged by the Carolina Playmakers at UNC. |
| 1920 | Tom graduates from UNC and begins working on his master’s degree at Harvard University. He decides on a playwriting career. |
| 1922 | Tom receives his master’s degree in English but continues for a third year at Harvard. His father dies after a long battle with cancer. Tom is unable to reach home in time and reads about his father’s death in the newspaper en route. |
| 1923 | Tom’s play Welcome to Our City is staged by the 47 Workshop at Harvard. |
| 1924 | Tom begins teaching English at New York University’s Washington Square College and makes his first trip to Europe on a Guggenheim scholarship. |
| 1925 | While in Paris, his manuscript for Mannerhouse is stolen, and Tom must completely rewrite the play. On his return trip to the U.S., Tom meets stage and costume designer Aline Bernstein. Although Aline is married, the couple begins a stormy five-year relationship. She urges Tom to try writing an autobiographical novel. |
| 1926 | After repeated rejections of his plays, Tom begins work on a novel he calls O Lost. |
| 1928 | The manuscript for O Lost is given to Maxwell Perkins, an editor at Charles Scribner’s Sons who becomes famous for not only editing Wolfe, but also F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. |
| 1929 | Tom’s first novel, retitled Look Homeward, Angel, is published. Many Asheville residents react so negatively to the town’s depiction in the novel that Tom stays away from home for years. |
| 1935 | Of Time and the River, Tom’s second novel and a sequel to Look Homeward, Angel, is published. |
| 1936 | Tom begins work on an epic new novel and travels back to Europe for the seventh and final time. |
| 1937 | Wolfe cuts his ties with Scribner’s and Maxwell Perkins, eventually moving to Harper & Brothers and editor Edward Aswell. In May 1937, Tom visits home for the first time since October 1929. Though pleasantly surprised by the warm welcome he receives, the writer finds it hard to get the privacy he needs for working. In July, Tom makes his last trip to Asheville. He returns to New York in September, having spent the summer working on a manuscript entitled The Party at Jack’s. He settles into his last apartment at the Hotel Chelsea, later home to many other artists and writers. |
| 1938 | Tom begins touring the west, visiting 11 national parks in two weeks. After contracting a lung infection, he is hospitalized in Seattle before finally being sent to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Exploratory brain surgery reveals an inoperable case of tubercular meningitis. Tom dies in Baltimore on September 15, 1938. His body is returned to Asheville and is buried in the family plot at Riverside Cemetery. |
| 1939 | The Web and the Rock is published posthumously from an unfinished manuscript Tom left behind. |
| 1940 | Tom’s last novel, You Can’t Go Home Again, is published. |
| 1941 | The Hills Beyond, a collection of his short stories, is published. |
For more information on the novelist Thomas Wolfe, please call the site at (828) 253-8304, email contactus@wolfememorial.com. |
|
