Born October 3, 1900, in Asheville, North Carolina, Thomas Wolfe was the youngest of eight children, two of whom died when they were very young. His father, William Oliver Wolfe, traveled around the northern United States, married twice without having children, and then moved to Asheville, where he married Julia Elizabeth Westall. When her youngest son was seven, Thomas's mother bought and moved into a boarding house called "The Old Kentucky Home." The children shuffled between the two homes, and Thomas became interested in the private school he attended at age eleven.

Wolfe entered the University of North Carolina when he was only fifteen. He eventually excelled there, and after he graduated he moved to Boston to complete a master of arts program at Harvard. By this time, he had begun writing plays and short stories, declaring in letters to his mother that he wanted to put "the...