Grendel | Author Biography

Grendel reflects two of Gardner's major interests: his belief in Fiction as a moral force for good, and his passion for the medieval period in history. Gardner was born in 1933 and grew up in Batavia, New York. His mother was an English teacher and his father a farmer and lay preacher, so it is perhaps not surprising that Gardner was eventually drawn to the medieval period, when society was largely agricultural and the Church played a central role in life. As a boy he was attracted not only to language but also to music and chemistry. His father's passion for opera rubbed off on young John, who sang in various choirs as a boy and later wrote several opera libretti on medieval subjects. Having decided that English was his field because he did well at it, Gardner attended DePauw University from 1951 to 1953. The latter year he also married Joan Louise Patterson, with whom he had two children. Transferring to Washington University in St. Louis, Gardner received his A.B. in 1955. He also took an M.A. at the State University of Iowa in 1956 and a Ph.D. in 1958. As his doctoral dissertation, Gardner wrote an unpublished novel, The Old Men.

John Gardner
John Gardner

After receiving his Ph.D., Gardner pursued a teaching career while continuing his writing. He held positions at a number of colleges and universities before settling at Southern Illinois University from 1965 to 1974. His first published novel, The Resurrection, was published in 1966, though it attracted little notice, and his second, The Wreckage of Agathon, appeared in 1970. Gardner had been writing fiction fairly steadily from an early age, and he described Grendel (1971) as a "late work" in an interview in 1974. Though The Sunlight Dialogues (1972) and October Light (1976) were published after Grendel, both were actually written prior to it. Grendel was the first book to bring Gardner widespread recognition. The novel was named one of the ten best books of 1971 by Time and Newsweek.

During this period the author also published (with Lennis Dunlap) a textbook, The Forms of Fiction (1961); a translation, The Complete Works of the Gawain-Poet (1965); Jason and Medeia (1972), a novel in verse; the collection The King's Indian: Stories and Tales (1974); and other scholarly works on medieval literary subjects.

Both The Sunlight Dialogues and Nickel Mountain (1973) were well received by the popular press. October Light won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction and was named one of the best books of 1976 by both Time and the New York Times. Gardner's reputation went down, however, after the publication of On Moral Fiction in 1978. While stating his own philosophy of moral affirmation eloquently, to many critics the book seemed arrogant and dismissive of many of Gardner's contemporaries.

From 1974 to 1978, Gardner held several short-term appointments in New York and New England colleges. During this period and the following four years, Gardner also published poetry, scholarly and children's books, a novel titled Mickelsson's Ghosts (1982), and a collection of stories. In 1978, he founded the writing program at the State University of New York at Binghamton. He served as its director until the time of his death, in a motorcycle accident, in 1982.