William Trevor was born in Mitchelstown, Co. Cork, in 1928, the son of a bank official, and spent his childhood in provincial Ireland. He studied at Trinity College, Dublin. Working first as a sculptor and teacher, then as an advertising copywriter, he published his first novel in 1958.
His subsequent novels won numerous prizes, including the Hawthornden Prize, the Heinemann Fiction Prize and the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Award. He was a three-times winner of the Whitbread Book of the Year Award, for The Children of Dynmouth (1976), Fools of Fortune (1983) and Felicia’s Journey (1994), and was also shortlisted four times for the Booker Prize. His last novel was Love and Summer (2009).
Trevor was also an acclaimed writer of short stories. His complete output was collected into two hardcover volumes by Viking Penguin in 2009. In 1999 he was awarded the prestigious David Cohen Prize for a lifetime’s literary achievement, and in 2002 he was knighted for his services to literature. William Trevor died in 2016.