Of Time And The River - A Legend of Man's Hunger In His Youth

It is a fictionalized autobiography, using the name Eugene Gant for Wolfe's, detailing the protagonist's early and mid-twenties, during which time the character attends Harvard University, moves to New York City and teaches English at a university there, and travels overseas with the character Francis Starwick. Francis Starwick was based on Wolfe's friend, playwright Kenneth Raisbeck. The novel was published by Scribners and edited by Maxwell Perkins.
The narrative of Of Time and the River closely follows the events of Wolfe's own life from 1920 to 1925. The novel, which ran to 912 pages in its first edition, is divided into eight books, the titles of which are borrowed from myths and legends that provide insight into the various stages of Eugene's pilgrimage. When the story opens, Eugene is preparing to board a northbound train that will take him from his hometown of Altamont, Catawba (modeled after Wolfe's hometown of Asheville, North Carolina) to Harvard University, where he intends to study writing in a graduate program. Along the way, Eugene stops to visit his dying father in a Baltimore hospital; Wolfe's account of Old Gant's traumatic death from cancer later in the novel is considered one of the work's most powerful scenes. After three years at Harvard, Eugene returns to Altamont for a summer, awaiting news from a Broadway producer to whom he has submitted one of his plays.
This book is difficult to assert its history, this is what I was able tofind from the lIbrary of Congress.
Description 7 p. l., 3-912 p. 22 cm. LC classification S3545.O337 O4 1935 LC copy PS3545.O337 O4 1935 Copy 3 Copy 3. Dust jacket. Purchase, Sept. 16, 1943 (DLC #3773B26).
PS3545.O337 O4 1935 Copy 4.
PS3545.O337 O4 1935 Copy 7 Copy 7. Dust jacket. Gift of Herman Finkelstein, Dec. 30, 1980.
Related names
Herman Finkelstein Collection (Library of Congress). DLC
Subjects
Young men--United States--Fiction.
Form/Genre
Autobiographical fiction.
Bildungsromane.
Notes
"First printing, February, 1935 ... third printing, March, 1935."