Glenway Wescott

Infobox Writer
name = Glenway Wescott


caption = The cover of "Glenway Wescott Personally" by Jerry Rosco, University of Wisconsin Press, 2002.)
birthdate = birth date|1901|4|11|mf=y
birthplace = Kewaskum, Wisconsin
deathdate = death date and age|1987|2|22|1901|4|11|mf=y
deathplace = Rosemont, New Jersey
occupation = Writer

Glenway Wescott (April 11, 1901 - February 22, 1987) was a major American novelist during the 1920-1940 period and a figure in the American expatriate literary community in Paris during the 1920s. Wescott was a homosexualEric Haralson, "Henry James and Queer Modernity", Cambridge University Press, 2003, page 175] . His relationship with longtime companion Monroe Wheeler lasted from 1919 until Wescott's death.

Biography

Wescott was born on a farm in Kewaskum, Wisconsin in 1901. He studied at the University of Chicago, where he was a member of a literary circle including Elizabeth Madox Roberts, Yvor Winters, and Janet Lewis. Independently wealthy, he began his writing career as a poet, but is best known for his short stories and novels, notably "The Grandmothers" (1926). He lived in Germany (1921–22), and in France (c.1925–33), where he mixed with Gertrude Stein and other members of the American expatriate community; Wescott was the model for the character Robert Prentiss in Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises". He returned to America and settled near Hampton, New Jersey.

His novel, "" (1940), was praised by the critics. "Apartment in Athens" (1945), the story of a Greek couple in Nazi-occupied Athens who must share their living quarters with a German officer, was a popular success. From then on he ceased to write fiction, although he published essays and edited the works of others.

In 1987 Wescott died of a stroke at his home in Rosemont, Delaware Township, Hunterdon County, New Jersey. [ [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DEFD6143BF937A15751C0A961948260 "Glenway Wescott, 85, Novelist and Essayist"] . "The New York Times", February 24, 1987. Accessed April 4, 2008.]

References

Further reading

*Rosco, Jerry (2002) "Glenway Wescott Personally: A Biography." Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
*Phelps, Robert, with Jerry Rosco (1990) "Continual Lessons: The Journals of Glenway Wescott 1937-1955." New York: Farrar Straus Giroux.
*Diamond, Daniel (2008) "Delicious: A Memoir of Glenway Wescott." Toronto: Sykes Press.

External links

* [http://www.howardwill.com/A_Visit_to_Priapus-Glenway_Wescott.htm A Visit to Priapus] , short story by Wescott
* [http://www.cercles.com/review/r29/rosco.html Review] of Jerry Rosco's biography and overview of Wescott's work