The couple enjoyed a 59-year marriage and had one son, Stuart Page. Stegner married Mary Stuart Page in 1934. The book became a literary and financial success and helped gain Stegner a position as an instructor at Harvard University, where he taught composition from 1939 to 1945. He won $2500, which at that time was a fortune. In 1937, Stegner published his first novel, Remembering Laughter, which won first prize in a contest sponsored by the publishing company Little, Brown. In between his stints in graduate school and for the next several years after, he worked as an instructor at various institutions, including Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois, the University of Utah at Salt Lake City, and the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He went on to earn an master's degree in 1932 and a doctorate in 1935 from the State University of Iowa. Making His Own WayĪs a young man Stegner worked his way through the University of Utah, graduating with a bachelor's degree in 1930. Model for many characters in his books: characters who relentlessly and thoughtlessly sought personal gain without any consideration for who or what they destroyed in the process.

As he said later, 'What I most wanted was to belong to something' ( Audubon).

Reading and writing gave him a hold on the world. Stegner purposely set out to be unlike his father by becoming bookish. George Stegner's life ended violently when he killed a woman he was with and then took his own life.

The family finally settled in Saskatchewan, Canada, although Stegner's father alternated between living with his wife and two sons to roaming the frontier, in search of his ultimate opportunity. Most of his childhood was spent moving from place to place as his father, George Stegner, a restless schemer, searched for a way to get rich quick. Wallace Stegner was born on February 18, 1909, in the rural community of Lake Mills, Iowa. Although sometimes categorized as merely a 'western writer,' Wallace Stegner (1909-1993) was more than that: he wrote 30 books, both fiction and nonfiction, served as a mentor to many young writers, and worked in support of conservation issues throughout his lifetime.

Collected stories of wallace stegner