James Thomas Farrell, American novelist and short-story writer, was born on Chicago's South Side, the son and grandson of Irish-Catholic laborers. The young Farrell attended neighborhood parochial schools, and after graduating from high school he worked almost two years as an express company clerk. In 1925 he began four years of intense study and wide reading at the University of Chicago, taking time out during several months in 1927-1928 while he unsuccessfully tried to make his way as a writer in New York City. The following year he published his first short story, and by the end of the decade he had amassed manuscripts of many other tales and most of the first two Studs Lonigan novels. A half century later, the huge body of Farrell's realistic fiction numbered forty-two volumes.

In April 1931 with $65 between them, Farrell and his bride Dorothy Butler arrived in Paris to begin a year's...