Thomas Wolfe was born on 3 October 1900 in Asheville, North Carolina, the youngest of eight children. He grew up in modest circumstances. His father was a stonemason and his mother a teacher. After studying at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Wolfe came to Harvard in 1920, determined to write important plays. He travelled for six years, taught sporadically at Washington Square College (New York) and wandered through interwar Europe. Look Homeward, Angel was finally published in 1929. This was followed by Of Time and the River (1935) and From Death to Morning. The Story of a Novel (1936) was Thomas Wolfe's last book to be published in his lifetime. In 1938, the master of stream of consciousness died of tuberculosis of the brain.