William Stoner

William Stoner is born into a Booneville farming family in 1891. In his early life, the farm life is all that he knows and he never travels outside of his immediate surroundings. At the suggestion of a county official, Stoner goes to the University of Missouri at the age of twenty, hoping to learn ways to make the decreasingly productive soil more fruitful. While there, he falls in love with English literature and, without his parents' knowledge, changes his course of studies. As his studies come to an end, he does not know what he wants to do with his degree; his teacher and the director of English literature, Archer Sloane, suggests he stays on to study English literature at the graduate level and earn his doctorate to become a teacher. Stoner accepts.

During his graduate years, Stoner makes two friends, Gordon Finch and David Masters; later, he...