William Trevor

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For the Victoria Cross recipient, see William Spottiswoode Trevor.
Sir William Trevor
Born William Trevor Cox
24 May 1928 (1928-05-24) (age 83)
Mitchelstown, County Cork, Ireland
Occupation novelist, short-story writer
Language English
Nationality Irish
Notable award(s) Aosdána, Whitbread Prize, Hawthornden Prize for Literature

William Trevor, KBE (born 24 May 1928) is an Irish author and playwright. One of the elder statesmen of the Irish literary world,[1] he is widely regarded as one of the greatest contemporary writers of short stories in the English language.[2]

Trevor has resided in England since the 1950s. Over the course of his long career he has written several novels and hundreds of short stories, for which he is best known.[3] He has won the Whitbread Prize three times and has been nominated five times for the Booker Prize, most recently for his novel Love and Summer (2009), which was also shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2011. Tim Adams, a staff writer for The Observer, described him as "widely believed to be the most astute observer of the human condition currently writing in fiction".[4]

Contents

[edit] Biography

Born as William Trevor Cox in Mitchelstown, County Cork, Ireland to a middle-class Protestant family, he moved several times to other provincial towns, including Skibbereen, Tipperary, Youghal and Enniscorthy as a result of his father's work as a bank official. He was educated at St. Columba's College, Dublin, and at Trinity College, Dublin, from which he received a degree in history. Trevor worked as a sculptor[5] under the name Trevor Cox[6] after his graduation from Trinity College, supplementing his income by teaching. He married Jane Ryan in 1952 and emigrated to England two years later, working as a copywriter for an advertising agency. His first novel, A Standard of Behaviour, was published in 1958, but had little critical success. In 1964, at the age of 36, Trevor won the Hawthornden Prize for Literature for The Old Boys. The win encouraged Trevor to become a full-time writer. In 2002, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom for services to literature. He and his family moved to Devon in England, where he has resided ever since. Despite having spent most of his life in England, he considers himself to be "Irish in every vein".[citation needed]

[edit] Works and themes

He has written several collections of short stories that were well-received. His short stories often follow a Chekhovian pattern. The characters in Trevor's work are typically marginalised members of society: children, the elderly, single middle-aged men and women, or the unhappily married. Those who cannot accept the reality of their lives create their own alternative worlds into which they retreat. A number of the stories use Gothic elements to explore the nature of evil and its connection to madness. Trevor has acknowledged the influence of James Joyce on his short-story writing, and "the odour of ashpits and old weeds and offal" can be detected in his work,[citation needed] but the overall impression is not of gloominess, since, particularly in his early work, the author's wry humour offers the reader a tragicomic version of the world. He has adapted much of his work for stage, television and radio. In 1990, Fools of Fortune was made into a film directed by Pat O'Connor, along with a 1999 film adaptation of Felicia's Journey, which was directed by Atom Egoyan.

Trevor's stories are set in both England and Ireland; they range from black comedies to tales based on Irish history and politics. Common themes in his works are the tensions between Protestant landowners and Catholic tenants. His early books are peopled by eccentrics who speak in a pedantically formal manner and engage in hilariously comic activities that are recounted by a detached narrative voice. Instead of one central figure, the novels feature several protagonists of equal importance, drawn together by an institutional setting, which acts as a convergence point for their individual stories. The later novels are thematically and technically more complex. The operation of grace in the world is explored, and several narrative voices are used to view the same events from different angles. Unreliable narrators and different perspectives reflect the fragmentation and uncertainty of modern life. Trevor has also explored the decaying institution of the "Big House" in his novels Fools of Fortune and The Story of Lucy Gault.[citation needed]

[edit] Awards and distinctions

Trevor is a member of the Irish Academy of Letters and Aosdána. He was awarded an honorary CBE in 1977 for "services to literature", and was made a Companion of Literature in 1994.[7] In 2002 he received an honorary knighthood in recognition of his services to literature.[8]

Trevor has been nominated for the Man Booker Prize five times, making the shortlist in 1970, 1976, 1991 and 2002, and the longlist in 2009.[9] He has won the Whitbread Prize three times and the Hawthornden Prize for Literature once.[10]

Trevor was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2011.[11]

[edit] Prizes

[edit] Legacies

A monument to Trevor – a bronze sculpture by Liam Lavery and Eithne Ring in the form of a lectern, with an open book incorporating an image of the writer and a quotation, as well as the titles of his three Whitbread Prize-winning works, and two others of significance – was unveiled in Trevor's native Mitchelstown on 25 August 2004.[citation needed]

On 23 May 2008, the eve of his 80th birthday, a commemorative plaque, indicating the house on Upper Cork Street, Mitchelstown where Trevor was born, was unveiled by Louis McRedmond.[citation needed]

In 2002, non-American authors became eligible to compete for the prestigious O. Henry Awards. Trevor has won the award four times, for his stories "Sacred Statues" (2002), "The Dressmaker's Child" (2006), "The Room" (2007), a juror favourite of that year, and for "Folie à Deux" (2008).

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Novels and novellas

[edit] Short story collections

  • The Day We Got Drunk on Cake and Other Stories (Bodley Head, 1967)
  • The Ballroom of Romance and Other Stories (Bodley Head, 1972)
  • Angels at the Ritz and Other Stories (Bodley Head, 1975)
  • Lovers of their Time (Bodley Head, 1978)
  • Beyond the Pale (Bodley Head, 1981)
  • The Stories of William Trevor (Penguin, 1983)
  • The News from Ireland and Other Stories (Bodley Head, 1986)
  • Family Sins and Other Stories (Bodley Head, 1989)
  • Outside Ireland: Selected Stories (Viking, 1992)
  • The Collected Stories (Penguin, 1993, 2003)
  • After Rain (Viking, 1996)
  • Cocktails an Doney's (Bloomsbury Classics, 1996)[12]
  • The Hill Bachelors (Viking, 2000)
  • A Bit On the Side (Viking, 2004)
  • Cheating At Canasta (Viking, 2007)
  • Bodily Secrets (Penguin Great Loves, 2007; new selection of several stories from earlier collections)
  • Collected Stories, Volumes I & II, (Penguin, 2009) ISBN 9780670918331 & 9780670918416

[edit] Drama

  • The Old Boys (Davis-Poynter, 1971)
  • A Night with Mrs da Tanka (Samuel French, 1972)
  • Going Home (Samuel French, 1972)
  • Marriages (Samuel French, 1973)
  • Scenes from an Album (Co-Op Books (Dublin), 1981)

[edit] Children's Books

  • Juliet's Story (Bodley Head, 1992)

[edit] Non-fiction

  • A Writer's Ireland: Landscape in Literature (Thames & Hudson, 1984)
  • Excursions in the Real World: Memoirs (Hutchinson, 1993)

[edit] As editor

[edit] References

  1. ^ Flood, Alison. "Impac prize shortlist dominated by three-strong Irish contingent". 12 April 2011. The Guardian.
  2. ^ "It's like gadgets in shops".
  3. ^ The Guardian (UK)
  4. ^ Ibid.
  5. ^ Homan Potterton, 'Suggestions of Concavity: William Trevor as Sculptor', Irish Arts Review, vol 18 (2002), pp.93-103.
  6. ^ http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/johntusainterview/trevor_transcript.shtml
  7. ^ Royal Society of Literature
  8. ^ Department for Culture, Media and Sport
  9. ^ "William Trevor". Man Booker Prize. http://www.themanbookerprize.com/prize/authors/60. Retrieved 4 July 2010. 
  10. ^ Pepinster, Catherine (29 September 2002). "William Trevor: The quiet chronicler of the lost and the damned". The Independent. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/william-trevor-the-quiet-chronicler-of-the-lost-and-the-damned-643969.html. Retrieved 4 July 2010. 
  11. ^ Battersby, Eileen. "William Trevor makes an Impac". 12 April 2011. The Irish Times.
  12. ^ http://www.borders.co.uk/book/cocktails-at-doneys-bloomsbury-classic-s/437707/


[edit] Sources

  • Mary Fitzgerald-Hoyt: William Trevor – Re-imagining Ireland, Liffey Press, Dublin 2003; ISBN 978-1904148067
  • Dolores MacKenna: William Trevor – The Writer and His Work, New Island Books, Dublin 1999; ISBN 978-1874597742
  • Tom McAlindon: Tragedy, history, and myth: William Trevor's Fools of Fortune. (Critical Essay); in: Irish University Review: a journal of Irish Studies, 2003
  • Kristin Morrison: William Trevor, Twayne; New York 1993; ISBN 978-0805770322
  • Hugh Ormsby-Lennon: Fools of Fiction – Reading William Trevor's Stories, Maunsel& Co., Dublin 2004; ISBN 978-1930901216
  • Gregory A. Schirmer: William Trevor – A Study of His Fiction, Routledge, London 1990; ISBN 978-0415044936

[edit] External links

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