Long Fiction:
The Apple of the Eye, 1924
The Grandmothers: A Family Portrait, 1927
The Pilgrim Hawk: A Love Story, 1940
Apartment in Athens, 1945
Short Fiction:
... Like a Lover, 1926
Good-bye, Wisconsin, 1928
The Babe’s Bed, 1930
Twelve Fables of Aesop, 1954
Poetry:
The Bitterns: A Book of Twelve Poems, 1920
Natives of Rock: XX Poems, 1921-1922, 1925
Nonfiction:
Elizabeth Madox Roberts: A Personal Note, 1930
Fear and Trembling, 1932
A Calendar of Saints for Unbelievers, 1932
Images of Truth: Remembrances and Criticism, 1962
The Best of All Possible Worlds: Journals, Letters, and Remembrances, 1914-1937, 1975
Continual Lessons: The Journals of Glenway Wescott, 1937-1955, 1990
Edited Texts:
The Maugham Reader, 1950
Short Novels of Colette, 1951
Glenway Wescott, born in Kewaskum, Wisconsin, on April 11, 1901, was a midwesterner by birth and education. He attended public schools in various Wisconsin towns and spent two years (1917-1919) at the University of Chicago. His family had hoped he would enter the ministry, while he entertained some hope of becoming a professional musician. After World War I he spent a year in Germany, then returned to live for a short time in New Mexico. His first book was a volume of poetry, The Bitterns, published in 1920; this was followed by a second book of verse, Natives of Rock, in 1925. His first novel, The Apple of the Eye, was completed during a period of several months that Wescott spent in New York City. Set in rural Wisconsin, the novel relates the conflicts and forces involved in a boy’s search for an understanding of the world and sex, a series of problems similar to those probed by many contemporary novelists, who seemed to be fascinated by the problems of the adolescent in the modern world. After the publication of his novel Wescott went again to Europe, and during the next eight years he was one of a large colony of American writers who lived abroad in the 1920’s.
Glenway Wescott
While in Europe he wrote The Grandmothers, which has received more acclaim from readers and critics than any of his other novels. It earned for Wescott the Harper Prize Novel Award for the year of publication. The novel, a saga of pioneer life in early Wisconsin, unfolds as it appears to Alwyn Tower, a young man who is very much like the author and who comes across an old family photograph album. His curiosity, awakened by the album, leads him to piece together the story of his family and relate the story as he finds it. This novel, like most of Wescott’s fiction, interprets humanity through the desires and motives of typical human beings. The novel is illustrative, too, of the flowing, cadenced prose which is one of Wescott’s strong points as a writer. The prose approaches the cadences of folk literature, and it was particularly well chosen for a novel about American pioneer life. Other works which appeared during the author’s years of expatriation were Good-bye Wisconsin, a volume of short stories; The Babe’s Bed, a long short story; Fear and Trembling, a volume of essays; and A Calendar of Saints for Unbelievers. The most interesting of these works is The Babe’s Bed, a meditation in which a young man dreams about the possible future of a baby nephew.
Returning to the United States in 1934, Wescott settled on a farm in Hunterdon County, New Jersey. The Pilgrim Hawk, published in 1940, is a novel which indicated that the author had managed to weather successfully a period of inactivity such as is sometimes fatal to a writer’s reputation. Ineligible for military service during World War II, Wescott sought to aid his country in other ways. An attempt to write a novel which would help Americans understand what had produced Nazism proved unsuccessful, however. An encounter with a Greek underground leader led Wescott to write another novel, Apartment in Athens, which describes the effect of the German occupation on one family in Athens, Greece, during World War II. The book was chosen by a national book club for its list and achieved a wide body of readers.
Early in the 1950’s Wescott turned to critical writing. He edited The Maugham Reader and Short Novels of Colette. From this point in his career Wescott became more of a public man of letters than an active writer. He wrote and delivered speeches, was active in the arts community, serving on boards and committees, gave talks and readings, appeared on television and radio, and participated in symposia and conferences. In 1962 he published a collection of literary essays, Images of Truth, which established him as an influential critic. He died in 1987 on his family’s farm in rural New Jersey, where he had lived for many years.