John Hoyer Updike was born on March 18, 1932. He was raised inShillington, Pennsylvania, the only child of Wesley Updike and Linda Grace Hoyer Updike. Updike's father was a mathematics teacher at the local high school and supported his family, which included the author's maternal grandparents, on a meager salary. When John Updike was thirteen, his family could no longer afford to live in Shillington and moved to a broken-down farmhouse ten miles outside of town. In 1950, Updike enteredHarvard University on a full scholarship. He was active in the school's literary scene, including being editor of the Harvard Lampoon. Before Updike graduated in 1954, he had met and married Mary Pennington, who was to be his wife for twenty-four years, and sold his first story to the New Yorker.

Updike was inOxford, England, in 1955, attending the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, when he was contacted by the...