Autograph of William Trevor

William Trevor Cox KBE (24 May 1928 – 20 November 2016), known by his pen name William Trevor, was an Irish novelist, playwright, and short story writer. One of the elder statesmen of the Irish literary world,^[5] he is widely regarded as one of the greatest contemporary writers of short stories in the English language.^[6]

Trevor won the Whitbread Prize three times and was nominated five times for the Booker Prize, the last for his novel Love and Summer (2009), which was also shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award in 2011. His name was also mentioned in relation to the Nobel Prize in Literature.^[7] He won the 2008 International Nonino Prize in Italy. In 2014, Trevor was bestowed Saoi by the Aosdána.^[8]

Trevor resided in England from 1954 until his death at the age of 88.^[9]

Biography

He was born as William Trevor Cox in Mitchelstown, County Cork, Ireland, to a middle-class, Anglo-Irish Protestant (Church of Ireland) 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 a succession of schools including St Columba's College, Dublin (where he was taught by Oisín Kelly) and at Trinity College Dublin, from which he received a degree in history. Trevor worked as a sculptor^[10] under the name Trevor Cox^[11] after he graduated from Trinity College, supplementing his income by teaching. He married Jane Ryan in 1952 and emigrated to England, working as a teacher, a sculptor and then as a copywriter for an advertising agency. During this time he and his wife had their first son.^[12] In 1952 he became an art teacher at Bilton Grange, a prep school near Rugby. Trevor was commissioned to carve reliefs for several churches, including All Saints, Braunston, Northamptonshire. In 1956 he moved to Somerset to work as a sculptor^[13] and carried out commissions for churches. He stopped wood carving in 1960.

His first novel, A Standard of Behaviour, was published in 1958 (by Hutchinson of London), but received little critical success. He later disowned this work, and, according to his obituary in the Irish Times, "refused to have it republished".^[12] It was, in fact, republished in 1982 and in 1989.

In 1964, at the age of 36, Trevor was awarded the Hawthornden Prize for Literature for The Old Boys. This success encouraged Trevor to become a full-time writer.

In 1971, he and his family moved from London to Devon in South West England, first to Dunkeswell, then in 1980 to Shobrooke, where he lived until his death. Despite having spent most of his life in England, he considered himself to be "Irish in every vein".^[14]

William Trevor died peacefully in his sleep on 20 November 2016. He was 88 years old.^[15][16]

Works and themes

He wrote 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 marginalized 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 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, 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 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, followed by a 1999 film adaptation of Felicia's Journey, which was directed by Atom Egoyan.

Trevor set his stories in both England and Ireland; they range from black comedies to tales based on Irish history and politics. A common theme is the tension between Protestant (usually Church of Ireland) 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 also explored the decaying institution of the "Big House" in his novels Fools of Fortune and The Story of Lucy Gault.

Awards and honours

Trevor was 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.^[17] In 2002 he received an honorary KBE in recognition of his services to literature.^[18] He won the 2008 International Nonino Prize in Italy.

Trevor was nominated for the Booker Prize five times, making the shortlist in 1970, 1976, 1991 and 2002, and the longlist in 2009.^[19] He won the Whitbread Prize three times and the Hawthornden Prize for Literature once.^[20]

Since 2002, when non-American authors became eligible to compete for the O. Henry Award, Trevor 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 Folie à Deux (2008).

Trevor was shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award in 2011.^[21]

Recognition

• 1965: Hawthornden Prize for Literature for The Old Boys^[22]
• 1970: Mrs. Eckdorf in O'Neill's Hotel was shortlisted for the Booker Prize^[23]
• 1975: Royal Society of Literature for Angels at the Ritz and Other Stories
• 1976: Whitbread Award for The Children of Dynmouth
  • Allied Irish Banks Prize for fiction
  • Heinemann Award for Fiction
  • Shortlisted for the Booker Prize
• 1980: Giles Cooper Award for Beyond the Pale
• 1982: Giles Cooper Award for Autumn Sunshine
• 1982: Jacob's Award for TV adaptation of The Ballroom of Romance
• 1983: Whitbread Prize for Fools of Fortune
• 1991: Reading Turgenev was shortlisted for the Booker Prize
• 1994: Whitbread Prize Best Novel for Felicia's Journey
• 1999: David Cohen Prize by the Arts Council of England in recognition of his work.
• 2001: Irish Literature Prize
• 2002: Irish PEN Award^[24]
• 2002: The Story of Lucy Gault was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Book Award
• 2003: Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award at the Listowel Writers' Week
• 2008: Bob Hughes Lifetime Achievement Award in Irish Literature

Legacies

A monument to William Trevor was unveiled in Trevor's native Mitchelstown on 25 August 2004. It is 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.

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.

Bibliography

See also

• List of winners and shortlisted authors of the Booker Prize for Fiction

References

Sources

• Mary Fitzgerald-Hoyt (2003). William Trevor: re-imagining Ireland. Liffey Press. ISBN 978-1-904148-06-7.
• Dolores MacKenna (1999). William Trevor: the writer and his work. New Island Books. ISBN 978-1-874597-74-2.
• McAlindon, Tom (2003). "Tragedy, history, and myth: William Trevor's Fools of Fortune". Irish University Review: A Journal of Irish Studies.
• Stephanie McBride; Irish Film Institute (2006). Felicia's Journey. Cork University Press. ISBN 978-1-85918-399-1.
• Kristin Morrison (1993). William Trevor. Twayne Publishers. ISBN 978-0-8057-7032-2.
• Hugh Ormsby-Lennon (2005). Fools of fiction: reading William Trevor's stories. Maunsel & Co. ISBN 978-1-930901-21-6.
• Gregory A. Schirmer (1990). William Trevor: Study of His Fiction. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-04493-6.

External links

• William Trevor at The British Council
• William Trevor at Ireland Literature Guide
• William Trevor at Read Ireland
• William Trevor at The New Yorker
• Archival material at
• "William Trevor, The Art of Fiction No. 108". The Paris Review (Interview). No. 110. Interviewed by Mira Stout. Spring 1989.

Interviews

• Interview with John Tusa, BBC Radio 2010
• Interview with Mark Lawson, BBC Radio 2009