Wolfe was born in Asheville, North Carolina, the youngest of eight children of William Oliver Wolfe (1851–1922) and Julia Elizabeth Westall (1860–1945). … See more

Wolfe was unable to sell any of his plays after three years because of their great length. The Theatre Guild came close to producing Welcome to … See more

In 1938, after submitting over one million words of manuscript to his new editor, Edward Aswell, Wolfe left New York for a tour of the Western United States. On the way, he stopped at Purdue University and gave a lecture, "Writing and Living", and then spent two … See more

Wolfe saw fewer than half of his work published in his lifetime, there being much unpublished material remaining after his death. He was the first American writer to leave two complete, unpublished novels in the hands of his publisher at death. Two Wolfe novels, See more

Upon publication of Look Homeward, Angel, most reviewers responded favorably, including John Chamberlain, Carl Van Doren, and Stringfellow Barr. Margaret Wallace wrote in The New York Times Book Review that Wolfe had produced "as interesting and … See more

Southerner and Harvard historian David Herbert Donald's biography of Wolfe, Look Homeward, won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1988.
Wolfe inspired the works of many other authors, including Betty Smith with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn See more

Two universities hold the primary archival collections of Thomas Wolfe materials in the United States: the Thomas Clayton Wolfe Papers at Harvard University's Houghton Library, which includes all of Wolfe's manuscripts, and the Thomas Wolfe Collections in … See more