COX, William Trevor 1928-

(William Trevor)

PERSONAL: Born May 24, 1928, in Mitchelstown, County Cork, Ireland; son of James William (a bank official) and Gertrude (Davison) Cox; married Jane Ryan, August 26, 1952; children: Patrick, Dominic. Education: Attended St. Columba's College (Dublin, Ireland), 1941-46; Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland), B.A., 1950. Politics: Liberal.

ADDRESSES: Offıce—c/o Sterling Lord Literistic Ltd., 1 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10010; c/o Peters, Fraser & Dunlop Group, 503-504 The Chambers, Chelsea Harbour, Lots Road, London SW10 0FX, England.

CAREER: Teacher in County Armagh, Northern Ireland, 1952-53; art teacher at prep school near Rugby, England, 1953-55, and in Somerset, England, 1956-59; while teaching, worked as a church sculptor; advertising copywriter for Notley's, London, England, 1960-65; writer, 1965—. Exhibitions: One-man exhibitions in Dublin, Ireland, and Bath, England.

MEMBER: Irish Academy of Letters.

AWARDS, HONORS: Winner of Irish section, "Unknown Political Prisoner" sculpture competition, 1953; second prize, Transatlantic Review short story competition, 1964; Hawthornden Prize, Royal Society of Literature, 1965, for The Old Boys; Society of Authors' traveling scholarship, 1972; Benson Medal, Royal Society of Literature, 1975, for Angels at the Ritz, and Other Stories; Allied Irish Bank Prize for literature, 1976; Heinemann Award for fiction, 1976; Whitbread Prize, 1978, for The Children of Dynmouth, and 1983, for Fools of Fortune; Commander, Order of the British Empire, 1979; Irish Community Prize, 1979; Giles Cooper Award for radio play, 1980, for Beyond the Pale, and 1982, for Autumn Sunshine; Jacob Award for television play, 1983; D.Litt., University of Exeter, 1984, Trinity College, Dublin, 1986, University of Belfast, 1989, and National University of Ireland, Cork, 1990; Sunday Express Book of the Year Award, and Whitbread Prize, both 1994, both for Felicia's Journey; Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, 1996; David Cohen British Literature Prize, 1999; Macmillan Silver Pen Award, and Irish Times Literary Award for Fiction, 2001, both for The Hill Bachelors; shortlisted for Booker Prize, 2002, for The Story of Lucy Gault; received honorary knighthood for services to literature, presented by Ireland's Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell; shortlisted for Whitbread Prize for best novel and James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction, both 2002, for The Story of Lucy Gault; Knighted, Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain, 2002, for his service to literature.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS; UNDER NAME WILLIAM TREVOR

A Standard of Behavior, Hutchinson (London, England), 1958.

The Old Boys (also see below), Viking (New York, NY), 1964.

The Boarding-House, Viking (New York, NY), 1965.

The Love Department, Bodley Head (London, England), 1966, Viking (New York, NY), 1967.

Mrs. Eckdorf in O'Neill's Hotel, Bodley Head (London, England), 1969, Viking (New York, NY), 1970.

Miss Gomez and the Brethren, Bodley Head (London, England), 1971.

Elizabeth Alone, Bodley Head (London, England), 1973, Viking (New York, NY), 1974.

The Children of Dynmouth, Bodley Head (London, England), 1976, Viking (New York, NY), 1977.

Other People's Worlds, Bodley Head (London, England), 1980, Viking (New York, NY), 1981.

Fools of Fortune, Viking (New York, NY), 1983.

Nights at the Alexandra, Harper (New York, NY), 1987.

The Silence in the Garden, Viking (New York, NY), 1988.

Two Lives (contains the novels Reading Turgenev and My House in Umbria), Viking (New York, NY), 1991.

Felicia's Journey, Viking (New York, NY), 1994.

Juliet's Story, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1994.

The Silence in the Garden, Penguin (New York, NY), 1996.

Death in Summer, Viking (New York, NY), 1998.

The Story of Lucy Gault, Viking (New York, NY), 2002.

My House in Umbria (see Two Lives above), Penguin Books (New York, NY), 2003.

STORIES; UNDER NAME WILLIAM TREVOR

The Day We Got Drunk on Cake, and Other Stories, Bodley Head (London, England), 1967, Viking (New York, NY), 1968.

The Ballroom of Romance, and Other Stories (includes "The Mark-2 Wife," "The Grass Widows," and "O Fat White Woman"; also see below), Viking (New York, NY), 1972.

Angels at the Ritz, and Other Stories, Bodley Head (London, England), 1975, Viking (New York, NY), 1976.

Lovers of Their Time, and Other Stories (includes "Matilda's England" and "Attracta"), Viking (New York, NY), 1978.

The Distant Past, and Other Stories, Poolbeg Press (Dublin Ireland), 1979.

Beyond the Pale, and Other Stories, Bodley Head (London, England), 1981, Viking (New York, NY), 1982.

The Stories of William Trevor (includes "The Penthouse Apartment," "Broken Homes," "A Complicated Nature," and "In at the Birth"), Penguin (England), 1983.

The News from Ireland, and Other Stories, Viking (New York, NY), 1986.

Family Sins, and Other Stories (includes "Kathleen's Field," "Events at Drimaghleen," "Coffee with Oliver," and "The Third Party"), Viking (New York, NY), 1989.

William Trevor: Collected Stories, Viking (New York, NY), 1992.

Outside Ireland: Selected Stories, Penguin (New York, NY), 1995.

Cocktails at Doney's and Other Stories, Bloomsbury, 1996.

After Rain: Stories, Viking (New York, NY), 1996.

Ireland: Selected Stories, Penguin (New York, NY), 1998.

The Hill Bachelors, Viking (New York, NY), 2000.

A Bit on the Side, Viking (New York, NY), 2004.

Also author of other stories, including "The Wedding in the Garden," "Mulvihill's Memorial," "Miss Smith," "The Bedroom Eyes of Mrs. Vansittart," and "The Time of Year." Stories anthologized in numerous collections, including The Bedside Guardian, edited by W. L. Webb, Collins, 1969, The Bodley Head Book of Longer Short Stories, edited by James Michie, Bodley Head (London, England), 1974, Best for Winter, edited by A. D. Maclean, Macmillan, 1979, The Bodley Head Book of Irish Short Stories, edited by Marcus, Bodley Head (London, England), 1980, and Seven Deadly Sins, Severn House, 1983.

PLAYS; UNDER NAME WILLIAM TREVOR

The Elephant's Foot, produced in Nottingham, England, 1966.

The Girl, S. French (London, England), 1968.

The Old Boys (adapted from his novel; produced in the West End, 1971), Davis-Poynter, 1971.

Going Home (one-act; produced in London, England, at King's Head Islington, February 29, 1972), S. French (London, England), 1972.

A Night with Mrs. da Tanka (one-act; produced in London, England, 1972), S. French (London, England), 1972.

A Perfect Relationship (one-act), produced in London, England, 1973.

The 57th Saturday (one-act), produced in London, England, 1973.

Marriages (one-act; produced in London, England, 1973), S. French (London, England), 1974.

Beyond the Pale (radio play), broadcast in England, 1980, televised, 1989.

Scenes from an Album, produced in Dublin, Ireland, at the Abbey Theatre, 1981.

Also author of television and radio plays for British Broadcasting Corporation, Inc. (BBC) and ITV, some adapted from his stories, including The Mark-2 Wife, O Fat White Woman, The Grass Widows, The General's Day, Love Affair, Last Wishes, Matilda's England, Secret Orchards, Autumn Sunshine, The Penthouse Apartment, Travellers, and Events at Drimaghleen.

OTHER; UNDER NAME WILLIAM TREVOR

Old School Ties (memoir), Lemon Tree Press (London, England), 1976.

A Writer's Ireland: Landscape in Literature (nonfiction), Viking (New York, NY), 1984.

(Editor) The Oxford Book of Irish Short Stories, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1989.

Excursions in the Real World: Autobiographical Essays, Knopf (New York, NY), 1994.

A collection of Trevor's manuscripts is housed at the University of Tulsa.

ADAPTATIONS: The Old Boys was adapted as a BBC television play, 1965; The Ballroom of Romance was broadcast on BBC-TV, 1982; The Children of Dynmouth was aired on BBC-TV, 1987; a screenplay by Michael Hirst was based on Fools of Fortune and directed by Pat O'Connor, 1990; Elizabeth Alone was also produced for BBC-TV; Felicia's Journey was adapted as a film by Atom Egoyan, 1999; My House in Umbria was adapted for film by Hugh Whitemore, directed by Richard Loncraine, and premiered on HBO, May 25, 2003.

SIDELIGHTS: Short story writer, novelist, and playwright William Trevor Cox is an Irish-born English writer better known to his readers as William Trevor. Considered by many critics to be one of the finest living short story writers in English, Trevor is equally renowned as a novelist, and is widely known in England for the television adaptations of his novels. Having lived in both Ireland and England, Trevor has written about people in both countries, often focusing on ordinary people who lead tragic, lonely lives. "I don't really have any heroes or heroines," Trevor remarked in a Publishers Weekly interview with Amanda Smith. "I don't seem to go in for them. I think I am interested in people who are not necessarily the victims of other people, but simply the victims of circumstances. . . . I'm very interested in the sadness of fate, the things that just happen to people." Originally working as a sculptor, Trevor became displeased with the increasingly abstract turn his art was taking, and so he took up writing as a means of better expressing his concern for the human condition. "I think the humanity that isn't in abstract art began to go into [my] short stories," Trevor told Smith.

Trevor's ability to empathize with a broad array of characters is among the qualities that critics most admire in his fiction. A contributor to the Economist praised Trevor as "piercingly sympathetic with the most socially negligible passer-by," while Commonweal's Suzanne Berne hailed his blend of "microscopically precise detail and cosmic insights into the human heart." A Publishers Weekly reviewer observed that Trevor "is equally able to inhabit the worlds of priests, restless American expatriates and quarrelsome academics, always with an acute sense of their wide range of voices and habits of mind."

In much of Trevor's fiction, the events or situations that most affect his characters occur offstage and often years in the past. Sometimes these are personal, as in The Old Boys, in which the public school reunion of eight octogenarians causes them to revert back to childish competitive behavior by reminding them of old grudges and rivalries. In other cases these events are historical, as in the "The Mourning," from The Hill Bachelors, in which a naïve young man is almost persuaded to plant a bomb for the IRA. His realization that, before him, another young man had died in this attempt gives him the strength to reject the job.

Satire is also prominent in such early Trevor books as The Boarding-House and The Love Department, although the situations in which his characters find themselves are often lamentable. However, New York Times Book Review critic Robert Towers wrote, since "the mid-1970's there has been . . . a subtle change of tone in the stories. The harsh comedy—the gleeful misanthropy—is less in evidence, as is the stance of impartiality; in the later work one can guess rather clearly where the author's sympathies lie."

In what one Times Literary Supplement reviewer declared to be "a collection that is never disappointing," The Ballroom of Romance, and Other Stories portrays a series of characters who are caught in dreary, barren lives, but lack the necessary confidence to change. Instead, they can only reflect upon what might have been, their memories and dreams leaving them isolated and alone. The reviewer noted, "The stories may be sad, but they have about them the unmistakable ring of truth." It is with these sad stories of ordinary people that the author finds himself repeatedly concerned. They may live unhappy lives because of their unwillingness or inability to give up the past or their illusions of reality, or, as with Trevor's Elizabeth Alone, because they are simply victims of fate.

In Elizabeth Alone Trevor first proposes a possible reason for human suffering. Set in a hospital, the book presents a series of ostensibly comic situations while simultaneously probing deeper issues through its sympathetic character portrayals. The title character, Elizabeth Aidallbery, has in one way or another lost everyone who was important in her life and has even begun to lose her sense of identity. She finds the strength to overcome her loneliness and carry on through one of her hospital mates, Miss Samson, whose religious faith has recently been shaken. Miss Samson convinces Elizabeth that the importance of caring for others, even—or perhaps especially—if the world has no God, gives people a purpose in life. A Times Literary Supplement reviewer complimented Trevor on his ability to execute this conclusion convincingly in a seriocomic novel, attributing this success to "the authority he has built up, as a writer, out of the sheer, detailed understanding of the characters he creates. . . . The stance of compassion which is adopted finally in Elizabeth Alone can now be seen to be implicit in all Mr. Trevor's best work. It gives him a place as a writer capable of handling the human comedy instead of merely manipulating comic human beings."

Collections such as Angels at the Ritz, and Other Stories and Lovers of Their Time, and Other Stories continue to illustrate Trevor's concern for average people and the importance of the effects of time. "Trevor is especially adept at making the presence of the past, the presence of people offstage, lean upon his characters," said Peter S. Prescott in a Newsweek review of Angels at the Ritz. Similarly, New York Times Book Review contributor Victoria Glendinning commented on the stories in Lovers of Their Time, "Nothing very extraordinary happens to [Trevor's] teachers, tradesmen, farmers and shop-assistants; the action is all off-stage, and they are caught and thrown off course by the wash of great and passionate events that happened in another time, another place."

With The Children of Dynmouth, Trevor's first Whitbread Prize-winning book, the author focuses on an unsympathetic boy named Timothy Gedge. Abandoned by his father and ignored by the rest of his family, Timothy has become a despicable character who has a crude sense of humor and is fascinated by death. Desperate for attention, he becomes convinced that he can find fame by doing an act for the variety television show, "Opportunity Knocks." But to get the props he needs, Timothy blackmails several of the respectable citizens of Dynmouth and "by the novel's end he has come close to destroying several people," wrote Joyce Carol Oates in the New York Times Book Review. "Timothy's malice arises from his chronic aloneness, so that it isn't possible, as the [character of] the vicar recognizes, to see the boy as evil."

Some critics saw Timothy's rescue by the vicar at the novel's conclusion to be a weak solution to an otherwise excellent book. "To imply that sooner or later the shrinks and the socialists will put an end to evil is to drag out an old chestnut indeed," wrote Sewanee Review contributor Walter Sullivan. Sullivan found that this flaw negates "the fine performance which leads up to this foolishness." Thomas R. Edwards commented in the New York Review of Books that The Children of Dynmouth "succeeds in being funny, frightening, and morally poised and intelligent at once." Oates similarly concluded that it is "a skillfully written novel, a small masterpiece of understatement."

In another Whitbread Prize-winning novel, Fools of Fortune, Trevor chronicles the years of lonely isolation of two lovers separated by a tragic turn of fate. Washington Post Book World critic Charles Champlin called the book a "benchmark novel against which other contemporary novels will have to be measured," one which reflects the "last seven decades of English-Irish history." The novel relates how British soldiers misguidedly destroy Willie Quinton's family and home in the year 1918, and how Willie's revenge on a British officer leads to his exile from Ireland. Forced to leave his beloved English cousin, Marianne, he is denied the chance to see her or their daughter, Imelda, for years to come. The Quintons, remarked Jonathan Yardley in the Washington Post Book World, "are all good, honorable people, but they—like poor Ireland—are victims of mere chance, arbitrary and random."

With other tales, such as the central story of The News from Ireland, and Other Stories and the novel The Silence in the Garden, Trevor relates the struggles in Ireland to the misfortunes of his characters and, as Richard Eder of the Los Angeles Times put it, "the passing of a kind of civility that Yeats celebrated." In the case of The Silence in the Garden, the story of how war and terrorism ruin a once-happy and prosperous Anglo-Irish family, Washington Post Book World critic Gregory A. Schirmer noted that Trevor "has much to say about the attitudes and patterns that lie behind the [British-Irish] violence, and about the ways in which the present is inevitably—and, in Ireland, often tragically—shaped by the past."

Although Trevor's stories and novels often involve dramatic events, he is mainly concerned with how these events preoccupy and obsess his characters. This inner tension is subtly portrayed through the author's quiet, understated writing style. Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times described this style in a review ofFools of Fortune as "spare, lilting prose . . . delineat[ing] these melodramatic events with economy and precision." For some critics, however, Trevor's use of understatement is a drawback in his writing. Anatole Broyard, for one, wrote in a New York Times review of Beyond the Pale and Other Stories, "Though everyone regards [Trevor] as a master of understatement, I wonder whether it isn't conceited in a way to insist on writing such carefully removed stories, so breathlessly poised on the edge of nonexistence."

In 1992 sixty of Trevor's short stories were published in William Trevor: Collected Stories. Reviewers were generally enthusiastic about the quality of the collection. Joseph Coates wrote in the Chicago Tribune Books, "The stories of this modern master often hinge on a slightness and subtlety that are the last thing we think of hefting a volume of this size." Coates went on to say that "despite this massive output, the salient characteristic of his work is the careful craftsmanship that produces its deceptively transparent surfaces. . . . What gives Trevor's stories their paradoxical sparkle . . . is his fascination with the endless variety and sheer unaccountability of human life, the infinite inventiveness with which people make their odd, pathetic but always somehow dignified arrangements for getting through their days and nights, with or without satisfaction, with or without the slimmest of memories to sustain them."

Trevor's sympathy for outcasts is at the core of his 1994 novel, Felicia's Journey. The plot concerns a young Irish girl, Felicia, who travels to the gloomy industrial districts of England in search of the young man who seduced and then abandoned her. She is preyed upon by Mr. Hilditch, a huge, lonely man with hidden sociopathic tendencies. Cunningly he weaves his web around her, engineering "chance" meetings and making innocent-sounding offers of help to her. Felicia stays with him for a time, and then, sensing evil, turns to Mrs. Calligary, a door-to-door evangelist. But when the missionary-like retreat Mrs. Calligary offers becomes unbearable, Felicia returns to her doom at Mr. Hilditch's residence. Reviewers differed sharply in their assessment of Felicia's Journey. Some, such as Spectator contributor Peregrine Hodson, found the book's many references to brand names and other details to be pointless and tedious. "Having finished Felicia's Journey, I felt I had read an extremely long short story," remarked Hodson. "Some may find, in the author's descriptions of minutiae, evidence of the artist's eye, which misses nothing. Others may feel the accumulation of trivia—'Marlboro, it said on the packet on the table'—clogs the narrative."

Richard Eder expressed a more serious objection to the book in the Los Angeles Times Book Review. He praised the author's rendering of Felicia, stating that "William Trevor, who is good at a great deal, is particularly good with the meek; and most particularly with the rural Irish meek. He finds the passion in them and he finds the ruses they devise to preserve . . . their lives." But Eder dismissed Mr. Hilditch as an unconvincing authorial device, one which unfortunately dominated the book: "True, [Trevor] can do splendid bullies, tricksters and arrogant bastards; but in each case he builds on their humanity and warps it just enough. . . . A monster, on the other hand, is a kind of void. . . . A writer can portray a man with a hole—an absence—in him, but a writer needs to be a special kind of metaphysician . . . to make the hole the character. . . . Hilditch is not enough of a character to generate a moral or significant action; he is a device through which the author acts."

Trevor's collection of stories, After Rain, is set in the familiar setting of Irish villages; more stories of failed relationships are displayed as Trevor describes a huge range of human emotions. Kakutani remarked that Trevor writes "with such assurance that he's able to collapse entire lives into a few brief pages, showing us how a character's past connects to his future, how his fate, in short, has been constructed." Some critics thought the collection lacks humor, and Kakutani believed there is a decided "mood of resignation" that permeates the stories.

The Hill Bachelors, Trevor's tenth volume of short stories, drew consistent praise. Finding some of the weaker stories marked by too much authorial manipulation, Kakutani nevertheless noted that Trevor "always manages to give the reader a sense of the entire arc of their lives," and hailed the volume for its "masterful variations on . . . familiar melodies, demonstrating once again [Trevor's] authority and poise as a storyteller, his Chekhovian understanding of missed connections and misplaced hopes." Suggesting that the book reveals more generosity toward its characters than is evident in Trevor's earlier work, New York Times Book Review contributor William H. Pritchard found the collection wise and moving. "No story here," claimed Brad Hooper in Booklist, "is anything less than a bravura performance." Among the stories that critics singled out for special praise were "Death of a Professor," in which a university don guesses what his colleagues really think of him after his fake obituary is published as a prank; "Against the Odds," in which an enterprising older woman lures a susceptible widower into "lending" her his life savings and then disappears; and the title story, concerning a young farmer's return to the land where no young woman is inclined to follow him.

The setting for Trevor's novel The Story of Lucy Gault is 1920s Ireland in the throes of violent upheaval. The privileged Gault family is considering moving to England, Mrs. Gault's home, but their daughter Lucy wants to stay in the country she loves and runs away. "By the middle of the second paragraph of The Story of Lucy Gault, everything that is going to happen . . . has been set in motion by a single act of violence, a night of terrifying but (given the novel's setting, Ireland during the 1920s) unexceptional, even quotidian, mayhem and menace," wrote Francine Prose in Harper's. The fateful event is Captain Gault's wounding of one of three young men who have come to set fire to their family home. This event makes the Gaults ultimately realize that they will never be safe in Ireland again. When Lucy runs away and becomes injured in a fall, the Gaults come to the mistaken conclusion that she has drowned and leave Ireland. Lucy is eventually found but her parents have virtually disappeared and their whereabouts remain unknown for the next thirty years. Writing in the Atlantic Monthly, a reviewer noted, "Exile, guilt, the peculiar (peculiarly Irish) fatalism that guilt engenders, and the ordinary antidotes for these griefs—religion, art, an orderly life . . . are the subjects and themes of The Story of Lucy Gault, but they are hardly the sum of its effect. For in his stately depiction of a tragic tale that might, in other hands, seem overwrought, perhaps even overdetermined, Trevor has once again captured the terrible beauty of Ireland's fate, and the fate of us all—at the mercy of history, circumstance, and the vicissitudes of time." New Statesman contributor Geordie Greig commented, "It is rare to read a novel where not a single word seems out of place. William Trevor's new novel is such a book." Diana McRae, writing in Library Journal, said that "Trevor's smooth, spare prose captures the quirky workings of the heart, and compassion for the human condition mitigates the harsh blows that fate often deals his characters."

Trevor has been compared to such luminaries as Muriel Spark, Anton Chekov, and Andre Malraux, but most often to his Irish predecessor, James Joyce. New York Times Book Review critic Ted Solotaroff compared Joyce and Trevor this way: "Both Trevor and the early Joyce are geniuses at presenting a seemingly ordinary life as it is, socially, psychologically, morally, and then revealing the force of these conditions in the threatened individual's moment of resistance to them. This is the deeper realism: accurate observation turning into moral vision." "Yet like Joyce before him," concluded Washington Post Book World contributor Howard Frank Mosher, "Trevor is entirely his own writer, with his own uncompromised vision of human limitations made accessible by a rare generosity toward his characters and their blighted lives."

While Trevor may be compared by many to Joyce, an Economist contributor reviewing Trevor's 2004 book of short stories, A Bit on the Side, noted, "Joyce was the supreme example of the writer's writer. His fellow countryman firmly belongs with his readers." The reviewer went on to comment, "With his writing, the reader never pauses to admire literary elegance for its own sake. There are no verbal flourishes . . . and no self-conscious Joycean obscurities. Each and every sentence is as long and plain as it needs to be, crafted in a very particular way to engage and draw the reader into the small human drama which is under scrutiny." The collection of twelve stories include tales about a man revealing to his wife that he once led a life of crime, a woman whose experience of a tragedy leads her to recount her parents' unstable marriage, and the outcome of a schoolgirl who gossips about a cuckolded man who is tutoring her. Hermione Lee, writing in the Guardian, commented, "I think this latest collection of William Trevor's stories—his 11th, as good as ever and as recognisable as ever—has the wrong title. He's chosen it from a story of muted London adultery, in which the inconclusive lovers part for no very good reason, sad, but sustained by how well they've behaved and by 'the delicacy of their reticence.' Though not the strongest story in the collection, it displays all the 'delicacy' and wisdom we've come to expect from Trevor, and to praise in him, over many years."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Dramatists, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1993.

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 7, 1977, Volume 9, 1978, Volume 14, 1980, Volume 25, 1983, Volume 71, 1992.

Contemporary Novelists, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1991.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 14: British Novelists since 1960, 1983, Volume 139: British Short-Fiction Writers, 1945-1980, 1994.

Schirmer, Gregory A., William Trevor: A Study of His Fiction, Routledge, 1990.

PERIODICALS

Atlantic Monthly, August, 1986; October, 2002, review of The Story of Lucy Gault, pp. 157-158.

Booklist, September 1, 2000, Brad Hooper, review of The Hill Bachelors, p. 8; August, 2002, Brad Hooper, review of The Story of Lucy Gault, p. 1887.

Boston Book Review, 1998.

Boston Globe, November 15, 1992, p. 91; February 6, 1994, p. 89; February 13, 1994, p. A15; January 8, 1995, p. 47.

Chicago Tribune, November 13, 1987; September 30, 1988; April 6, 1994, section 5, p. 3; January 15, 1995, section 14, p. 3.

Chicago Tribune Book World, July 29, 1979; March 15, 1981; February 14, 1982; October 30, 1983.

Christian Science Monitor, February 26, 1970; March 10, 1994, p. 14; January 10, 1995, p. 13.

Commonweal, December 3, 1999, Jon Nilson, review of The Collected Stories, p. 29; June 16, 2000, Suzanne Berne, "Summer Reading," p. 20.

Economist (U.S.), November 11, 2000, review of The Hill Bachelors, p. 108; June 12, 2004, review of A Bit on the Side, p. 82.

Encounter, January, 1979.

Globe and Mail (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), December 31, 1983; October 24, 1987; September 17, 1988.

Guardian (Manchester, England), Hermione Lee, review of A Bit on the Side, p. 26.

Harper's, October, 1983, pp. 74-75; December, 2002, Francine Prose, "Comfort Cult: On the Honest Unloveliness of William Trevor's World," p. 76.

Hudson Review, winter, 1991, pp. 686-690.

Irish Literary Supplement, spring, 1991, p. 20.

Irish Times, May 22, 1988.

Kansas City Star (via Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service), January 21, 2004, John Mark Eberhart, "'Lucy Gault' Author Styles His Prose with Concision" (interview with author).

Library Journal, September 1, 2002, Diana McRae, review of The Story of Lucy Gault, p. 216.

Listener, July 21, 1988, pp. 25-26.

London Magazine, August, 1968.

London Review of Books, June 23, 1988, p. 22; December 16, 1993, pp. 22-23.

Los Angeles Times, October 2, 1983; September 29, 1988; February 10, 1994, Richard Eder, review of "Excursions in the Real World: Memoirs," p. E10.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, January 11, 1981; March 11, 1984, p. 4; May 4, 1986, p. 3; August 6, 1989; May 20, 1990, p. 3; September 5, 1993, p. 6; February 13, 1994, p. 6; January 8, 1995, p. 3.

Nation, December 3, 1983, pp. 574-577; November 18, 2002, Patrick Smith, review of The Story of Lucy Gault, p. 40.

New Republic, February 4, 1967; November 28, 1983, pp. 37-39; June 9, 1986, pp. 28-30; February 6, 1989, pp. 37-40; October 1, 1990, pp. 40-41.

New Statesman, October 15, 1971; July 9, 1976; September 22, 1978; September 9, 2002, Geordie Greig, review of The Story of Lucy Gault, p. 53.

New Statesman & Society, August 27, 1993, pp. 40-41.

Newsweek, June 14, 1976; February 22, 1982; October 10, 1983.

New Yorker, July 12, 1976.

New York Review of Books, April 19, 1979; March 19, 1981; December 22, 1983, pp. 53-54; June 26, 1986, pp. 32-33, 35; May 17, 1990; September 26, 1991, pp. 29-30.

New York Times, September 31, 1972; March 31, 1979; January 17, 1981; February 3, 1982; September 26, 1983; May 14, 1986; August 27, 1988; May 11, 1990, p. C33; January 3, 1995, p. B27; November 12, 1996; October 17, 2000, Michiko Kakutani, review of The Hill Bachelors, p. B7.

New York Times Book Review, February 11, 1968; July 11, 1976; April 8, 1979; February 1, 1981; February 21, 1982; October 2, 1983, pp. 1, 22, 24; June 8, 1986, p. 14; January 17, 1988, p. 24; October 9, 1988, p. 12; June 3, 1990, p. 9; September 8, 1991, p. 3; February 3, 1993, p. 1; February 28, 1993, pp. 1, 25-27; February 13, 1994, p. 7; January 8, 1995, pp. 1, 22; October 22, 2000, William H. Pritchard, review of The Hill Bachelors, p. 11.

Observer, June 11, 1980; April 6, 1986, p. 27; June 5, 1988; November 1, 1987; February 4, 1990; May 26, 1991.

Plays and Players, September, 1971.

Publishers Weekly, October 28, 1983, Amanda Smith, interview with Trevor; September 11, 2000, review of The Hill Bachelors, p. 65; August 5, 2002, review of The Story of Lucy Gault, p. 52.

San Francisco Review of Books, Volume 16, number 3, 1991, pp. 47-48.

Saturday Review, May 12, 1970, pp. 44-45.

Sewanee Review, spring, 1978, Walter Sullivan, review of The Children of Dynmouth, pp. 320-325.

Spectator, October 11, 1969; May 13, 1972; November 29, 1986, p. 25; June 1, 1991, p. 28; October 17, 1992, pp. 25-26; August 28, 1993, p. 32; August 20, 1994, p. 34.

Sunday Times, May 29, 1988, pp. 68-69; May 26, 1991, pp. 6-7.

Time, January 26, 1970; October 10, 1983.

Times (London, England), June 18, 1980; October 15, 1981; April 28, 1983; March 20, 1986; May 30, 1991, p. 12.

Times Literary Supplement, October 26, 1973, review of Elizabeth Alone; June 20, 1980; October 16, 1981; April 29, 1983; August 31, 1984; April 11, 1986; November 5, 1987; June 10, 1988; January 26, 1990, p. 87; May 31, 1991, p. 21; September 17, 1993, p. 24; August 19, 1994, p. 20.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), September 10, 1989; November 22, 1992, p. 1.

Variety, May 24, 1999, Emanuel Levy, review of Felicia's Journey (film), p. 65.

Vogue, February 1, 1968.

Wall Street Journal, March 2, 1994, p. A9; January 26, 1995, p. A12.

Washington Post, March 11, 1995, p. A17.

Washington Post Book World, April 8, 1979; February 1, 1981; February 21, 1982; September 25, 1983, p. 3; March 4, 1984; May 25, 1986, p. 6; August 28, 1988; May 27, 1990; August 18, 1991; January 22, 1995, pp. 1, 10.

Writer, October, 1990.*