Wallace Stegner

In a career spanning more than fifty years, Wallace Stegner (190993) emerged as the greatest contemporary author of the American Westwriting more than two dozen works of history, biography, essays, and fiction, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Angle of Repose and the bestselling Crossing to Safety. Jackson J. Bensons Wallace Stegner: His Life and Work is the first full-dress biography of this celebrated Dean of Western Writers. Drawing on nearly ten years of research and unlimited access to Stegners letters and personal files, Benson traces the trajectory of Wallace Stegners life from his birth on his grandfathers Iowa farm to his prominence as an award-winning writer, critic, historian, environmental activist, and teacher, and as founder of Stanfords creative writing program. But Bensons book is as much a consideration of Stegners literary legacy as it is a retelling of his life. His critical reassessment of the entire body of Stegners work argues convincingly for his subjects place in the literary canonnot merely as a regional Western writer but straightforwardly as one of the great American writers of the twentieth century.