Early Life
William March was born as William Edward Campbell, the eldest son of a poor, itinerant family in and around Mobile, Alabama. His father worked in the lumber industry in South Alabama, and was an occasional heavy drinker who had a fondness for reciting poetry (especially Edgar Allan Poe's) at the dinner table. His mother (whose maiden name was Susan March) was probably better educated and taught the children to read and write. Neither of them seemed to have supported young March's literary efforts—he later stated he had composed a 10,000 line poem at the age of 12, but had burned the manuscript. Having 10 other siblings, March was afforded no privileges; by the time he was 14 the family moved to Lockhart, Alabama, preventing him from going to high school. Lockhart would later become the imaginary Hodgetown, Pearl County, in The Tallons (1936). Instead, March received occasional schooling probably in one-room schools such as was common in sawmill towns. He found employment in the office of a lumber mill.
Two years later March had returned to Mobile and found employment in a local law office. By 1913, he had saved enough money to take a high school course at Valparaiso University in Indiana and later returned to Alabama to study law at the University of Alabama. He thrived as a student but lacked the necessary tuition to complete his law degree. In the fall of 1916, he moved to a small boarding house in Brooklyn, finding work as a clerk in the law firm of Nevins, Brett and Kellog, in Manhattan.
Read more about this topic: William March
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early and/or life:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“... business training in early life should not be regarded solely as insurance against destitution in the case of an emergency. For from business experience women can gain, too, knowledge of the world and of human beings, which should be of immeasurable value to their marriage careers. Self-discipline, co-operation, adaptability, efficiency, economic management,—if she learns these in her business life she is liable for many less heartbreaks and disappointments in her married life.”
—Hortense Odlum (1892–?)
“I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. What force has a multitude? They can only force me who obey a higher law than I.... I do not hear of men being forced to live this way or that by masses of men. What sort of life were that to live?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)