The Web and the Root

Thomas Wolfe

Jul 2009 · Harper Collins

About this ebook

Shortly before his death at a tragically young age, author Thomas Wolfe presented his editor with an epic masterwork that was subsequently published as three separate novels: You Can't Go Home Again, The Hills Beyond, and The Web and the Rock.

The Web and the Root features the three initial sections of the The Web and the Rock, widely considered to be the book's strongest material. A prequel to You Can't Go Home Again, it is the story of George Webber's momentous journey from Libya Falls, North Carolina, to the Golden City of the North—offering vivid, sometimes cutting depictions of rural pleasures and small-town clannishness while exploring boundless urban possibility and the complex, violent undercurrents of the metropolis.

About the author

Thomas Wolfe was born in Asheville, North Carolina on October 3, 1900. He graduated from the University of North Carolina and Harvard University. He taught at New York University from 1924 to 1930. His four long autobiographical novels are Look Homeward, Angel; Of Time and the River; The Web and the Rock; and You Can't Go Home Again. He also wrote short stories that were collected in The Hills Beyond and From Death to Morning. He wrote several plays including Welcome to Our City. From an early bout with pneumonia, he suffered from tuberculosis of the lungs, which led to fatal tuberculosis of the brain. He died following brain surgery on September 15, 1938 at age 37.