Chateau

William Maxwell (1908-2000) was born in Illinois. He was the author of a distinguished body of work: six novels, three short story collections, an autobiographical memoir and a collection of literary essays and reviews. A New Yorker editor for 40 years, he helped to shape the prose and careers of John Updike, John Cheever, John O'Hara, Sylvia Townsend Warner and Eudora Welty. His novel, So Long Tomorrow won the American Book Award, and in 1995 he received the PEN/Malamud Award.

"Delicious and dead-on... All the embarrassments and gratifications of European travel are preserved in the amber of Maxwell's much pondered, seemingly casual prose." New Yorker "As the voices of Austen, Turgenev and Tolstoy have survived, so will Maxwell's. There aren't many truly great writers among us. William Maxwell is one of them" The Times "It's hard not to see it as a work of genius" Times Literary Supplement "His gentle urbanity is a joy" Sunday Telegraph "He combines educated intelligent and instinctive apprehension of human complexity in a way that would have earned Henry James' approval. William Maxwell is the very model of what a novelist should be" Independent on Sunday