The American novelist and playwright Thomas Wolfe was born in Asheville, North Carolina. Although his parents later divorced, his dysfunctional family (a puritanical mother and a poetry-loving, alcoholic father) came to have a major impact on Wolfe’s largely autobiographical work. He was only fifteen when he started university. He later went on to study drama at Harvard where he graduated with a Master of Arts in 1922, but he had little success as a playwright and began to teach English at New York University. Between 1925 and 1930, he had a relationship with the stage designer Aline Bernstein who supported him financially when he had to take time off work in order to write. He often travelled to Europe, and his experiences there added another dimension to his work.