John Williams

William Stoner is born at the end of the nineteenth century into a dirt-poor Missouri farming family. Sent to the state university to study agronomy, he instead falls in love with English literature and embraces a scholar's life, far different from the hardscrabble existence he has known.

Yet as the years pass, William Stoner encounters a succession of disappointments: marriage into a "proper" family estranges him from his parents; his career