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William Maxwell: Early Novels and Stories

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The late William Maxwell (1908-2000) served for forty years as an editor at 'The New Yorker' magazine. An Illinois-boarn realist whose literary works provided his readers with 'windows' into small-town midwestern family life of the 1910 and 1920s, Maxwell's own mastery of American prose style was (and remains) unsurpassed by any of his contemporary including Eudora Welty, J. D. Slainger, John Updike, and Alice Munro (all of whom he was a first reader of their fiction in his professional capacity with 'The New Yorker'). Now his four early novels (Bright Centory of Heaven; They Came Like Swallows; The Folded Leaf; and Time Will Darken It) have been collected under one cover, along with nine of his early short stories, and his essay 'The Writer as Illusionist' which he wrote in 1955. "William Maxwell: Early Novels And Stories" is a valued and very strongly recommended addition to community, college, and university American Literature reference collections and supplemental reading lists.

The first book of Maxwell's I read, in my late teens, was "So Long, See You Tomorrow" [in the second volume of this series,, "Later Novels"]. It was so great, so moving, that I couldn't imagine at that time ever reading anything else by this author. Fortunately I went exploring eventually. "The Folded Leaf" and "Time Will Darken It" [in this volume] should be on any reader's shelf or in their mind. I recommend this volume of Maxwell's early novels and stories as well as the second volume of his later works. Money well spent on an American writer whose work will genuinely enrich your life.