William Maxwell: Early Novels and Stories (Loa #179): Bright Center of Heaven / They Came Like Swallows / The Folded Leaf / Time Will Darken It / Stor

by William Maxwell

With his second book, They Came Like Swallows (1937), William Maxwell found his signature subject matter--the fragility of human happiness--as well as his voice, a quiet, cadenced Midwestern voice that John Updike has called one of the wisest and kindest in American fiction. Set against the background of the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918, this short novel presents the loving character of Elizabeth Morison, a devoted wife and mother, through the eyes of those whom she is fated to leave decades before her time.

Edmund Wilson described The Folded Leaf (1945) as "a quite unconventional study of adolescent relationships--between two boys, with a girl in the offing--in Chicago and in a Middle Western college: very much lived and very much seen." He praised this "drama of the immature" for the compassion Maxwell brings to his male protagonists, whose intensely felt, unarticulated bond is beyond their inchoate ability to understand.

Time Will Darken It (1948) is a drama of the mature: a good man's struggle to keep duty before desire and his family's needs before his own. It paints a portrait of Draperville, Illinois, in 1912, a proud and isolated community governed by gossip, where an ambitious young woman must not overreach the limits society has placed on her sex, and an older, married gentleman must not encourage her should she dare.

Together with these major works, this Library of America edition of Maxwell's early fiction collects his lighthearted first novel, Bright Center of Heaven (1934), out of print for nearly 70 years, and nine masterly short stories. It concludes with "The Writer as Illusionist" (1955), Maxwell's fullest statement on the art of fiction as he practiced it.

LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 159853016X
• ISBN13: 9781598530162
• Release Date: January 2008
• Publisher: Library of America
• Length: 920 Pages
• Weight: 1.46 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 5.2" x 8.1"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

One of Our Great Writers, Collected

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.

A valued and very strongly recommended addition

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.