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The West Virginia Encyclopedia
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The West Virginia Encyclopedia
Writer John Knowles (September 16, 1926-November 29, 2001) was born in Fairmont. He attained literary fame in 1959 with his first novel, A Separate Peace. The book was inspired by his war-years experience at a private school, Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. Knowles later attended Yale University.
A coming-of-age novel often compared to J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, Knowles’s first book continues to be widely read and has achieved the status of a modern classic. A Separate Peace was nominated for the National Book Award and earned its author a Rosenthal Award and the William Faulkner Award for best first novel. Knowles’s other published works include Morning in Antibes (1962), Double Vision: American Thoughts Abroad (1964), Indian Summer (1966), Phineas: Six Stories (1969), Paragon (1971), Spreading Fires (1974), A Vein of Riches (1978), Peace Breaks Out (1981), and The Private Life of Axie Reed (1986). A Vein of Riches, set in and around ‘‘Middleburg,’’ apparently a fictional Fairmont, was Knowles’s notable use of a West Virginia coal country setting for his fiction.
John Knowles died in Florida.
Written by Gordon Simmons
Brenni, Vito J. West Virginia Authors: A Bibliography 2nd ed., rev. by Joyce Binder. Morgantown: West Virginia University Library, 1968.
Bryant, H. B. A Separate Peace: The War Within. Boston: Twayne Pub., 1990.