Born June 11, 1925, to engineer William Clark Styron and Pauline Margaret Abraham Styron, William Styron grew up in the port town of Newport News, Virginia. His grandparents and great-grandparents came from North Carolina and were deeply enmeshed in southern culture, running a cotton plantation and owning slaves. Styron's traditional southern education consisted of a heavy dose of the liberal arts and religious discipline. After studying at Presbyterian Davidson College, Styron enlisted in the Marine Corps, training to be an officer. His experience in the military became fodder for his books, especially The Long March (1956), a novel about a forced stateside road march of Marine reservists. After his stint in the Marines, Styron returned to the states to finish his degree at Duke University in North Carolina.

Thinking that he was feeding his dream of becoming a writer, Styron took a job at McGraw-Hill publishers but resigned shortly...