William Maxwell

Author profile

born

August 16, 1908 in Lincoln, Illinois, The United States

died

July 31, 2000

gender

male

genre

Literature & Fiction

About this author

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William Keepers Maxwell Jr. was an American novelist, and fiction editor at the New Yorker. He studied at the University of Illinois and Harvard University. Maxwell wrote six highly acclaimed novels, a number of short stories and essays, children's stories, and a memoir, Ancestors (1972).

His award-winning fiction, which is increasingly seen as some of the most important of the 20th Century, has recurring themes of childhood, family, loss and lives changed quietly and irreparably. Much of his work is autobiographical, particularly concerning the loss of his mother when he was 10 years old growing up in the rural Midwest of America and the house where he lived at the time, which he referred to as the "Wunderkammer" or "Chamber of Wonders". H...more William Keepers Maxwell Jr. was an American novelist, and fiction editor at the New Yorker. He studied at the University of Illinois and Harvard University. Maxwell wrote six highly acclaimed novels, a number of short stories and essays, children's stories, and a memoir, Ancestors (1972).

His award-winning fiction, which is increasingly seen as some of the most important of the 20th Century, has recurring themes of childhood, family, loss and lives changed quietly and irreparably. Much of his work is autobiographical, particularly concerning the loss of his mother when he was 10 years old growing up in the rural Midwest of America and the house where he lived at the time, which he referred to as the "Wunderkammer" or "Chamber of Wonders". He wrote of his loss "It happened too suddenly, with no warning, and we none of us could believe it or bear it... the beautiful, imaginative, protected world of my childhood swept away."

Since his death in 2000 several works of biography have appeared, including A William Maxwell Portrait: Memories and Appreciations (W. W. Norton & Co., 2004), My Mentor: A Young Man's Friendship with William Maxwell by Alec Wilkinson (Houghton-Mifflin, 2002), and William Maxwell: A Literary Life by Barbara Burkhardt (University of Illinois Press, 2005).

In 2008 the Library of America published the first of two collections of William Maxwell, Early Novels and Stories, Christopher Carduff editor. His collected edition of William Maxwell's fiction, published to mark the writer's centenary, was completed by a second volume, Later Novels and Stories in the fall of 2008.

His complete bibliography is as follows:

Novels;
Bright Center of Heaven (1934)
They Came Like Swallows (1937)
The Folded Leaf (1945)
Time Will Darken It (1948)
The Chateau (1961)
So Long, See You Tomorrow (1980)

Short stories;
Stories (1956)
The Old Man and the Railroad Crossing and Other Tales (1966)
Over by the River, and Other Stories (1977)
Five Tales (1988)
Billie Dyer and Other Stories (1992)
All The Days and Nights: The Collected Stories of William Maxwell (1995)
Early Novels and Stories (2008)

Non-fiction;
Ancestors: A Family History (memoir) (1972)
The Outermost Dream (essay collection) (1989)

Children's books;
The Heavenly Tenants (1946)
Mrs. Donald's Dog Bun and His Home Away from Home (1995) (less)

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Books by William Maxwell

Average rating: 4.03 · 2,841 ratings · 467 reviews · 51 distinct works

	So Long, See You Tomorrow 4.02 avg rating — 1,509 ratings — published 1979 — 17 editions	My rating:
	They Came Like Swallows 4.08 avg rating — 380 ratings — published 1937 — 10 editions	My rating:
	Time Will Darken It 4.07 avg rating — 204 ratings — published 1992 — 8 editions	My rating:
	Folded Leaf 4.00 avg rating — 237 ratings — published 1945 — 12 editions	My rating:
	All the Days and Nights: The Collected Stories 4.29 avg rating — 137 ratings — published 1995 — 4 editions	My rating:
	The Chateau 3.62 avg rating — 115 ratings — published 1985 — 7 editions	My rating:
	William Maxwell: Later Novels and Stories by William Maxwell, Christopher Carduff (Editor) 4.74 avg rating — 19 ratings — published 2008	My rating:
	The Outermost Dream: Literary Sketches 3.82 avg rating — 22 ratings — published 1989 — 2 editions	My rating:
	Billie Dyer and Other Stories 4.09 avg rating — 23 ratings — published 1992 — 4 editions	My rating:
	Ancestors: A Family History 3.62 avg rating — 24 ratings — published 1971 — 5 editions	My rating:

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Quotes by William Maxwell

“What we, or at any rate what I, refer to confidently as memory--meaning a moment, a scene, a fact that has been subjected to a fixative and thereby rescued from oblivion--is really a form of storytelling that goes on continually in the mind and often changes with the telling. Too many conflicting emotional interests are involved for life ever to be wholly acceptable, and possibly it is the work of the storyteller to rearrange things so that they conform to this end. In any case, in talking about the past we lie with every breath we take.”
― William Maxwell

12 people liked it

“It seemed like a mistake. And mistakes ought to be rectified, only this one couldn't be. Between the way things used to be and the way they were now was a void that couldn't be crossed. I had to find an explanation other than the real one, which was that we were no more immune to misfortune than anybody else, and the idea that kept recurring to me...was that I had inadvertently walked through a door that I shouldn't have gone through and couldn't get back to the place I hadn't meant to leave. Actually, it was other way round: I hadn't gone anywhere and nothing was changed, so far as the roof over our heads was concerned, it was just that she was in the cemetery.”
― William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow

tags: grief

8 people liked it

“His sadness was of the kind that is patient and without hope.”
― William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow

tags: grief

7 people liked it

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The Newbery Award...: 1947 Honor - The Heavenly Tenants	1	3	Jan 29, 2010 07:36am
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William Maxwell

Author profile

combine editionsBooks by William Maxwell

Quotes by William Maxwell

Topics Mentioning This Author

combine editions
Books by William Maxwell