Glenway Wescott Collection (VMF182), 1919 | MSS Manuscripts

Wescott, Glenway (1901-1987)

Glenway Wescott (April 11, 1901 – February 22, 1987) was a major American novelist during the 1920-1940 period and a figure in the American expatriate literary community in Paris during the 1920s. Born on a farm in Kewaskum, Wisconsin, Westcott studied at the University of Chicago, where he was a member of a literary circle including Elizabeth Madox Roberts, Yvor Winters, and Janet Lewis. Independently wealthy, he began his writing career as a poet, but is best known for his short stories and novels, notably The Grandmothers (1927). He lived in Germany (1921–22), and in France (c.1925–33), where he mixed with Gertrude Stein and other members of the American expatriate community.  Wescott was the model for the character Robert Prentiss in Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises.

His novel, The Pilgrim Hawk: A Love Story (1940), was praised by the critics. Apartment in Athens (1945), the story of a Greek couple in Nazi-occupied Athens who must share their living quarters with a German officer, was a popular success. From then on, Wescott ceased to write fiction, although he published essays and edited the works of others.