William Keepers Maxwell Jr. Explained

William Maxwell
Birth Date:August 16, 1908
Birth Place:Lincoln, Illinois, U.S.
Death Place:New York City, U.S.
Education:University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (BA)
Harvard University (MA)
Genre:Domestic realism

William Keepers Maxwell Jr. (August 16, 1908 – July 31, 2000) was an American editor, novelist, short story writer, essayist, children's author, and memoirist. He served as a fiction editor at The New Yorker from 1936 to 1975. An editor devoted to his writers, Maxwell became a mentor and confidant to many authors.

Early life

Maxwell was born in Lincoln, Illinois, on August 16, 1908. His parents were William Keepers Maxwell and Eva Blossom (née Blinn) Maxwell. During the 1918 flu epidemic, the 10-year-old Maxwell became ill and survived, but his mother died. After his mother's death, the boy was sent to live with an aunt and uncle in Bloomington, Illinois. His father remarried, and young Maxwell joined him in Chicago. He attended Senn High School. He received his B.A. summa cum laude from the University of Illinois in 1930 where he was class salutatorian, elected to Phi Beta Kappa,[1] poetry editor of The Daily Illini,[2] and a member of Sigma Pi fraternity.[3] Maxwell earned an A.M. at Harvard University.[4] Maxwell taught English briefly at the University of Illinois where he served as faculty advisor to his fraternity and published an article about it in the fraternity's magazine[5] before moving to New York.

Career

Maxwell was best known for being a fiction editor of The New Yorker magazine for thirty-nine years (1936–1975), where he worked with writers such as Sylvia Townsend Warner, Vladimir Nabokov, John Updike, J. D. Salinger, John Cheever, Mavis Gallant, Frank O'Connor, Larry Woiwode, Maeve Brennan, John O'Hara, Eudora Welty, Shirley Hazzard, and Isaac Bashevis Singer. Welty wrote of him as an editor: "For fiction writers, he was the headquarters."[6]

He also wrote six novels, short stories and essays, children's stories, and a memoir, Ancestors (1972). His fiction 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 and growing up in rural Midwestern United States. After the flu epidemic, young Maxwell had to move away from his house, which he referred to as the "Wunderkammer" or "Chamber of Wonders". He spoke 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."[7]

In 1968, Maxwell was elected president of the National Institute of Arts and Letters.[8]

Maxwell was a friend and correspondent of the English writer Sylvia Townsend Warner, and was her literary executor. He edited a volume of her letters, and a further volume of his correspondence with her, The Element of Lavishness, was published in 2001.

Since his death in 2000, several biographical works about him have been published, 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 works by Maxwell, Early Novels and Stories, edited by Christopher Carduff. His collected edition of Maxwell's fiction, published to mark the writer's centenary, was completed by publication of the second volume, Later Novels and Stories, in the fall of 2008.

Personal life

William Maxwell married Emily Gilman Noyes of Portland, Oregon. Emily Maxwell was an accomplished painter, winning the Medal of Honor in 1986 from the National Association of Women Artists. She also reviewed children's books for The New Yorker. The couple were married for 55 years. Maxwell died eight days after his wife.[9] They had two daughters, Katherine and artist and curator Emily Brooke ("Brookie") Maxwell.[10] William Maxwell died on July 31, 2000, in New York City. The epitaph marking his memorial gravestone in Oregon reads, "The Work is the Message".

Bibliography

Novels

Omnibus editions

Short fiction

Collections
Stories[13]
width=25%TitleYearFirst publishedReprinted/collectedNotes
Homecoming1938none . Maxwell, William . January 1, 1938 . Homecoming . The New Yorker . 13 . 46 . 17–19.

Non-fiction

Essays and reporting
Memoirs

Children's books

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Notes

Awards and honors

Further reading

External links

Notes and References

  1. News: The Scholar's Reward . The Daily Illini . 4 . May 6, 1930. March 28, 2017 .
  2. News: The Daily Illini: The Illinois Magazine Section . The Daily Illini . May 5, 1929. 26 December 2016.
  3. Fall 1985. 74. 3. The Emerald of Sigma Pi. Past & Present... Journalism. 13.
  4. Wilborn Hampton. "William Maxwell, 91, Author and Legendary Editor, Dies". The New York Times, August 1, 2000. Retrieved March 23, 2013.
  5. Maxwell. William. May 1933. 20. The Emerald of Sigma Pi. House Mother. 6–8.
  6. http://bookhaven.stanford.edu/2012/10/remembering-william-maxwell-“he-used-a-pause-better-than-most-of-us-use-a-paragraph-”/ "Remembering William Maxwell"
  7. Web site: Influenza 1918 American Experience PBS. 2020-07-07. www.pbs.org. en.
  8. Spring 1969. 56. 1. The Emerald of Sigma Pi. Orchids To: Arts Institute President. 19.
  9. Harriet O'Donovan Sheehy. "William Maxwell and Emily Maxwell". The Guardian, August 25, 2000. Retrieved March 23, 2013.
  10. Web site: Brookie Maxwell, an Artist and Curator, Dies at 59 - The New York Times.
  11. Autobiographical novella about the cruel impact of the 1918 flu epidemic, as seen through the eyes of an 8-year-old Midwestern child and his family.
  12. An aging man remembers a boyhood friendship he had in 1920s Illinois, which falters following a murder.
  13. Short stories unless otherwise noted.
  14. Pension Gallia, Martinique.
  15. The constellations of the zodiac come to life and visit a family farm in Wisconsin.
  16. http://www.artsandletters.org/awards2_popup.php?abbrev=Howells The William Dean Howells Medal
  17. [National Book Foundation]
  18. So Long won the 1982 award for paperback Fiction.
    From 1980 to 1983 in National Book Awards history there were dual hardcover and paperback awards in most categories. Most of the paperback award-winners were reprints, including this one.
  19. http://lts.brandeis.edu/research/archives-speccoll/findingguides/archives/dept-subject/creativeartsawards.html Poses Institute for the Arts, Brandeis Creative Arts Award
  20. http://www.ssml.org/symposium/mark90s.html Mark Twain Award, Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature

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