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Wallace Stegner (1909–1993)

Author of Angle of Repose

84+ Works 18,699 Members 524 Reviews 118 Favorited
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About the Author

In 1972, Wallace Earle Stegner won a Pulitzer Prize for Angle of Repose (1971), a novel about a wheelchair-bound man's recreation of his New England grandmother's experience in a late nineteenth-century frontier town. Stegner was born on February 18, 1909 in Lake Mills, Iowa. He was an American show more novelist, short story writer, environmentalist, and historian; he has been called "The Dean of Western Writers". He also won the US National Book Award in 1977 for The Spectator Bird. Stegner grew up in Great Falls, Montana; Salt Lake City, Utah; and in the village of Eastend, Saskatchewan, which he wrote about in his autobiography Wolf Willow. Stegner taught at the University of Wisconsin and Harvard University. Eventually he settled at Stanford University, where he initiated the creative writing program. His students included Wendell Berry, and Sandra Day O'Connor. The Stegner Fellowship program at Stanford University is a two-year creative writing fellowship. The house Stegner lived in from age 7 to 12 in Eastend, Saskatchewan, Canada, was restored by the Eastend Arts Council in 1990 and established as a Residence for Artists; the Wallace Stegner Grant For The Arts offers a grant of $500 and free residency at the house for the month of October for published Canadian writers. Stegner died in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on April 13, 1993, from a car accident on March 28, 1993. (Bowker Author Biography) show less

Series

Works by Wallace Stegner

Angle of Repose (1971) 5,439 copies
Crossing to Safety (1987) 4,244 copies
The Big Rock Candy Mountain (1943) 1,141 copies
The Spectator Bird (1976) 1,060 copies
All the Little Live Things (1967) 701 copies
Great American Short Stories (1957) — Editor — 495 copies
Recapitulation (1979) 316 copies
A Shooting Star (1961) 275 copies
Mormon Country (1942) 274 copies
Joe Hill (1950) 259 copies
Remembering Laughter (1937) 242 copies
American Places (1981) 206 copies
Sound of Mountain Water (1969) 179 copies
The Women on the Wall (1950) 75 copies
Second Growth (Bison Book) (1947) 60 copies
Four Portraits and One Subject: Bernard DeVoto (1963) — Editor; Contributor — 16 copies
Angle Of Repose Part 2 of 2 (1996) 13 copies
One Way to Spell Man (1982) 11 copies
One Nation (1945) 10 copies
Great Western short stories (1777) — Introduction; Contributor — 9 copies
The Sense of Place (1986) 6 copies
On a Darkling Plain (1940) 4 copies
Modern composition (1969) 4 copies
To a Young Writer (2009) 3 copies
Teaching the Short Story (1966) 3 copies
Two Rivers 3 copies
The City of the Living (1956) 3 copies
The potter's house (1938) 3 copies
COME SI DIVENTA SCRITTORE (1993) 2 copies
FIRE AND ICE 2 copies
The writer in America (1951) 1 copy

Associated Works

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) — Introduction, some editions — 42,715 copies
The Big Sky (1947) — Foreword, some editions — 1,127 copies
The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons (1875) — Introduction, some editions — 698 copies
FaceOff (2014) — Editor, some editions — 502 copies
Fifty Great American Short Stories (1965) — Contributor — 430 copies
The Granta Book of the American Short Story (1992) — Contributor — 369 copies
Trails West (1979) 260 copies
Literary history of the United States (1946) — Contributor — 190 copies
Modern American Memoirs (1995) — Contributor — 189 copies
The Aspirin Age, 1919-1941 (1949) — Contributor — 129 copies
From Ink Lake: Canadian Stories (1990) — Contributor — 128 copies
Ansel Adams: Images 1923-1974 (1974) — Foreword — 55 copies
Art of Fiction (1967) — Contributor — 51 copies
Storm: Stories of Survival from Land and Sea (2000) — Contributor — 44 copies
Unknown California (1985) — Contributor — 41 copies
The Humane Vision of Wendell Berry (2011) — Contributor — 41 copies
Buried Unsung: Louis Tikas and the Ludlow Massacre (1982) — Foreword — 24 copies
Studies in Fiction (1965) — Contributor — 22 copies
Family: Stories from the Interior (1987) — Contributor — 15 copies
The Best American Short Stories 1955 (1955) — Contributor — 13 copies
The Best American Short Stories 1943 (1943) — Contributor — 11 copies
A Zion Canyon Reader (2014) — Contributor — 10 copies
The best of the Best American short stories, 1915-1950 (1975) — Contributor — 10 copies
The Best American Short Stories 1947 (1947) — Contributor — 7 copies
Latter-day Lore: Mormon Folklore Studies (2013) — Contributor — 7 copies
A Vanishing America: The Life and Times of the Small Town (1964) — Introduction — 7 copies
The Literary Horse: Great Modern Stories About Horses (1995) — Contributor — 6 copies
Great Salt Lake: An Anthology (2002) — Contributor — 6 copies
The Best American Short Stories 1952 (1952) — Contributor — 5 copies
Contemporary Vermont Fiction: An Anthology (2014) — Contributor — 5 copies
The Best American Short Stories 1942 (1942) — Contributor — 4 copies
Remembering (1981) — Contributor — 4 copies
Great Tales of the Far West (1956) — Contributor — 2 copies
Ansel Adams - Letters & Images 1916-1984 — Foreword — 2 copies
Sunstone - Vol. 5:1, January/February 1980 (1980) — Contributor — 1 copy

Tagged

19th century (705) 20th century (184) adventure (885) America (259) American (740) American fiction (203) American history (216) American literature (1,447) American West (534) anthology (275) biography (185) California (180) children's (200) classic (1,536) classic literature (219) classics (1,713) essays (226) fiction (6,539) friendship (276) historical fiction (487) history (621) humor (279) literature (1,224) Mark Twain (333) marriage (205) Mississippi (220) Mississippi River (347) non-fiction (393) novel (1,052) own (235) racism (234) read (672) short stories (483) slavery (616) to-read (2,009) Twain (190) unread (233) USA (387) western (176) young adult (214)

Common Knowledge

Legal name
Stegner, Wallace Earle
Birthdate
1909-02-18
Date of death
1993-04-13
Burial location
Lincoln-Noyes Cemetery, Greensboro, Vermont, USA
Gender
male
Nationality
USA
Birthplace
Lake Mills, Iowa, USA
Place of death
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
Cause of death
respiratory failure
Places of residence
Lake Mills, Iowa, USA
Great Falls, Montana, USA
Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
Saskatchewan, Canada
Los Altos Hills, California, USA
Education
University of Utah (BA ∙ 1930)
State University of Iowa (MA ∙ 1932)
State University of Iowa (PhD ∙ 1935)
University of California
Occupations
professor
historian
novelist
essayist
Relationships
Stegner, Page (son)
Stegner, Mary (wife)
Organizations
Stanford University
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Harvard University
University of Utah
Augusta College
Sierra Club (show all 9)
University of Toronto
American Academy in Rome
National Parks Advisory Board
Awards and honors
Pulitzer Prize (1972)
American Academy of Arts and Letters (Literature ∙ 1969)
American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1965)
American Antiquarian Society (1985)
Robert Kirsch Award (1980)
Western Literature Association's Distinguished Achievement Award (1974) (show all 16)
Fellow, Utah State Historical Society
O. Henry Award (1942, 1950, 1954)
National Book Award (1977)
Commonwealth Club Gold Medal (1968)
Blackhawk Award (1963)
National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship (1972)
Fublright Fellowship (1962, 1968)
Guggenheim Fellowship (1950, 1952, 1960)
Rockefeller Fellowship (1950-51)
Phi Beta Kappa
Short biography
Wallace Earle Stegner was an American novelist, short story writer, environmentalist, and historian, often called "The Dean of Western Writers". He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1972 and the U.S. National Book Award in 1977.

Members

Discussions

Found: Book about couples cited in another book in Name that Book (January 16)
Wallace Stegner: American Author Challenge in 75 Books Challenge for 2015 (August 2015)
Group Read: Stegner, Where the Bluebird Sings..... in 75 Books Challenge for 2010 (October 2010)

Reviews

I didn't find this all that engrossing - it's a slender story following on from 'Big Rock Candy Mountain' (I would read that first), and set many years later when one of the characters returns to his youthful hometown, Salt Lake City. It is a kind of meditation on memory, regret, family, change, missed chances and roads not taken. There's some very good writing, and memorable scenes, but in the end it doesn't have the weight and impact of some of his other novels.
 
Flagged
breathslow | 10 other reviews | Jan 27, 2024 |
A bleak tragic tale of sisters divided by love and reunited by loneliness in Iowa farm country. It's a slight and early effort from Stegner, but has plenty of signs of his subtle, rich writing style, and his psychological insight. Well worth reading for Stegner fans, but if you're not already an enthusiast, perhaps start with the Spectator Bird, or Crossing to Safety, before moving on to the longer novels The Big Rock Candy Mountain, or Angle of Repose.
 
Flagged
breathslow | 9 other reviews | Jan 27, 2024 |
Not Stegner's best, but still very good indeed. His main character, Joe Allston, a retired educated man living with his wife in the California hills, meditates on the nature of intrusive youth, intrusive disease, intrusive wildlife.

He introduces himself: "I am concerned with gloomier matters: the condition of being flesh, susceptible to pain, infected with consciousness and the consciousness of consciousness, doomed to death and the awareness of death. My life stains the air around me. I am a tea bag left too long in the cup, and my steepings grow darker and bitterer."

As the story shows, sorrow and death find us all out - we can never 'retire' from these - and, in Allston's estimation, makes our life richer for it. It's a sobering and grim book in some ways, but full of 'wild' life too.
… (more)
 
Flagged
breathslow | 24 other reviews | Jan 27, 2024 |

Lists

AP Lit (1)
1970s (1)

Awards

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Associated Authors

Page Stegner Editor & Preface, Editor
Eliot Porter Photographer
Mark Twain Contributor
John Steinbeck Contributor
Paul Horgan Contributor
Bret Harte Contributor
Hamlin Garland Contributor
Stephen Crane Contributor
T. H. Watkins Introduction
Bernard DeVoto Introduction
Edith Wharton Contributor
Herman Melville Contributor
Edgar Allan Poe Contributor
James Thurber Contributor
Henry James Contributor
Eudora Welty Contributor
Ambrose Bierce Contributor
William Faulkner Contributor
Washington Irving Contributor
Sherwood Anderson Contributor
O. Henry Contributor
John O'Hara Contributor
William March Contributor
Hortense Calisher Contributor
Conrad Aiken Contributor
H.L. Davis Contributor
Julius P. Barclay Bibliography
Dorothy M. Johnson Contributor
Juanita Brooks Contributor
Frederic Remington Contributor
Willa Cather Contributor
Jack London Contributor
Harvey Fergusson Contributor
Emerson Hough Contributor
Oliver La Farge Contributor
William Saroyan Contributor
Will Henry Contributor
Jarvis Thurston Contributor
Ray B. West Jr. Contributor
Conrad Richter Contributor
Max Brand Contributor
Owen Wister Contributor
Jackson J. Benson Introduction
William Low Illustrator
Jane Smiley Introduction
Robert Stone Introduction
Mark Bramhall Narrator

Statistics

Works
84
Also by
50
Members
18,699
Popularity
#1,171
Rating
4.0
Reviews
524
ISBNs
333
Languages
9
Favorited
118

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