Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward Angel

Thomas Wolfe was born on October 3, 1900, in Asheville, North Carolina to a stonecutter and a boarding house owner. Wolfe’s father, William Oliver Wolfe, whom during his travels, felt the addition of an “e” to his last name was necessary. He adopted the “e” and since descendants have kept his alteration. Mr. Wolfe married twice before marrying the mother of his eight children. Julia Elizabeth Westall was nine years William Oliver Wolfe’s junior and birthed Thomas Clayton Wolfe at the age of 40. His Mother, Julia Elizabeth Wolfe, bought a boarding house nearby the home where Thomas was born in 1906. Wolfe was named after his mother’s father.

Thomas was born the youngest of his eight siblings, six of which lived into adulthood. Leslie E. Wolfe,

Unfortunately, Thomas failed to find work and he began teaching English at the New York University. After a year, Wolfe travelled abroad to Europe for three years. In the duration of his trip he began on the manuscript of his first novella, Look Homeward, Angel. Upon his return, aboard the Olympic in 1925, he met a woman by the name of Aline Bernstein, married to a wealthy New Yorker with two children, “they fell in love immediately and began a passionate affair that lasted, with many turbulent quarrels and crises, until 1932” (Donald). In 1929, the manuscript of Look Homeward, Angel was published, with the help of editor Maxwell Perkins. Look Homeward, Angel was a story that followed the life of Eugene Gant, the tale of this character is inspired by the real events that occurred in Wolfe’s life, it was a story made from an autobiography. With the publication of Thomas Wolfe’s first novella grew more and more dissatisfied with Maxwell Perkins’ work. A year after his first novella was published a second novella, Web of Earth, was published under the same editor. Marking “the beginning of the end of the pair’s working relationship” for he had over edited and cut more than what Wolfe approved to be cut, from Look Homeward, Angel and his other works (Biography.com). After some time a third installment was added to the Thomas Wolfe collection,