Literary critics ranked him with Dickens, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Melville. His vibrant autobiographical novels Look Homeward, Angel and Of Time and the River won Thomas Wolfe the admiration of his peers, and writers as various as Kerouac, Mailer, and Vonnegut have acknowledged a debt to him. With extracts from his personal papers as well as reviews of his work and assessments of his genius, this illustrated volume poignantly recounts the course of Wolfe's career and bolsters his literary reputation.--From publisher description.