In 1942 Sloan Wilson received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard University.
Career
Gallery of Sloan Wilson
1961
Author Sloan Wilson (1920-2003), whose 1955 novel 'The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit' characterized the atmosphere of conformity in 1950s America, May 1961. Photo by Evening Standard
Gallery of Sloan Wilson
1962
New York, New York, United States
Time-Life reporter and novelist Sloan Wilson (1920-2003), at home in New York, United States, December 1962. Photo by Ben Martin
Gallery of Sloan Wilson
1962
New York, New York, United States
Time-Life reporter and novelist Sloan Wilson (1920-2003) in New York, United States, December 1962. Photo by Ben Martin
Gallery of Sloan Wilson
1962
New York, New York, United States
Time-Life reporter and novelist Sloan Wilson (1920-2003) in New York, December 1962. Photo by Ben Martin
Gallery of Sloan Wilson
Gallery of Sloan Wilson
Photo of novelist Sloan Wilson, author of A Summer Place, and The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit.
Author Sloan Wilson (1920-2003), whose 1955 novel 'The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit' characterized the atmosphere of conformity in 1950s America, May 1961. Photo by Evening Standard
(From the bestselling author of The Man in the Gray Flanne...)
From the bestselling author of The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, a World War II novel that is as thrilling as it is true to life Hoping to draw a nice, lengthy shore duty after two years at sea, Lieutenant Barton is instead told that he is being sent right back out, this time as captain of a supply ship sailing from California to New Guinea and stopping at every small island in between. Homesick for his wife, he has no choice but to accept the assignment and a crew of twenty-six landlubbers whose last names all begin with W. Their first load of cargo? Pineapples destined for Hawaii. Life aboard the one-hundred-eighty-foot SV-126 is never dull. When Barton isn’t battling gale-force winds and monstrous waves, he is coping with seasick sailors and budding rivalries that threaten to turn mutinous. Hanging over the ship like a storm cloud is the knowledge that the world is at war and the enemy is never far away. Whether Lieutenant Barton and his crew are fighting torpedoes and typhoons or writing letters to loved ones, Voyage to Somewhere offers a unique and page-turning perspective on what the Second World War was really like.
(Universally acclaimed when first published in 1955, The M...)
Universally acclaimed when first published in 1955, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit captured the mood of a generation. Its title - like Catch-22 and Fahrenheit 451 - has become a part of America's cultural vocabulary. Tom Rath doesn't want anything extraordinary out of life: just a decent home, enough money to support his family, and a career that won't crush his spirit. After returning from World War II, he takes a PR job at a television network. It is inane, dehumanizing work. But when a series of personal crises force him to reexamine his priorities - and take responsibility for his past - he is finally moved to carve out an identity for himself. This is Sloan Wilson's searing indictment of a society that had just begun to lose touch with its citizens. The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit is a classic of American literature and the basis of the award-winning film starring Gregory Peck.
(First published in 1958 and then turned into a film of th...)
First published in 1958 and then turned into a film of the same name in 1959 featuring Troy Donahue, Sandra Dee, Dorothy McGuire, and Richard Egan, this classic romance is available for the first time in ebook format. Ken and Sylvia met twice at the Summer Place. The first summer they were in their teens. Their intimacy was without love. They'd met too early. The second summer they shouldn't have fallen in love…and did. They were in their thirties-married-each with children. Had they met too late? Ken and Sylvia decided to break two marriages to make the one they wanted together. They almost broke a third that hadn't even started yet. Because Ken's daughter and Sylvia's son met at the Summer Place. They were in their teens. For them, it was neither too early nor too late. This novel is about how marriages are made on earth-and unmade. It is about the price people pay for changing their minds about love.
(Away from It All is Sloan Wilson, first-person singular. ...)
Away from It All is Sloan Wilson, first-person singular. He tells what happens when he abandons writing and pursues a life-long dream. The dream is a boat. But to live it he has to include his second wife and their two-year-old daughter. Wilson takes the chance.
(Sloan Wilson has written a chronicle of two members of th...)
Sloan Wilson has written a chronicle of two members of the upper-middle class, Dana Campbell and Caroline Stauffer, whose parents are part owners of a fashionable resort hotel on Lake George in the 1920s and 1930s. As he did in The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, Wilson again explores the sensitive underbelly of American success. His descriptions of the frustrations of sex, from teenage petting to the vicissitudes of the marriage bed, are lush as well as relevant.
What Shall We Wear to This Party?: The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, Twenty Years Before & After
(Sloan Wilson, the man who wrote the book that captured so...)
Sloan Wilson, the man who wrote the book that captured so much of the American ethos of The Fifties, brought everything up to date with this twenty-years-later update on his life and times.
(Jarred from Boston University and his young bride by the ...)
Jarred from Boston University and his young bride by the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Paul Schuman finds himself aboard a tiny Coast Guard cutter in the frozen seas off Greenland in pursuit of heavily armed German weather ships.
(A deep-seated rivalry between a father and his son is dra...)
A deep-seated rivalry between a father and his son is dramatically and courageously resolved at a critical, life-threatening moment during the pair's involvement in an international piracy scheme.
(During World War II in the Pacific, young Syl Grant, comm...)
During World War II in the Pacific, young Syl Grant, commander of a retread ammunition tanker, tries to overcome the explosive tensions of his maverick crew in preparation for the final attack on Japan.
(This sequel to The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit finds Tom...)
This sequel to The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit finds Tom Rath, ten years later, embarking on a new career, a new life in the country, and eventually facing the most important discovery of his life.
Sloan Wilson was an American journalist, educator, and author. He wrote poetry and fiction throughout much of his life, but it was the success of The Man in Gray Flannel Suit in 1955, that helped him become a full-time novelist.
Background
Sloan Wilson was born on May 8, 1920, in Norwalk, Connecticut, United States. He was the son of Albert F. and Ruth (Danenhower) Wilson. He had two siblings. His father was a professor at New York University. Sloan Wilson's grandfather was a United States Naval Academy graduate and the family sailed a 76ft schooner.
Education
Sloan Wilson attended Ransom Everglades School. In 1942 he got a Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard University.
During World War II Sloan Wison served in the United States Coast Guard. With the war’s end he found work as a reporter for the Providence Journal, followed by work as a writer for Time, Inc., and as an assistant director of the National Citizens Commission for Public Schools from 1949 to 1952. Next, he taught for three years at the University of Buffalo (now State University of New York at Buffalo). With the success of The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit in 1955, however, he found enough financial security to focus his time on writing. His novel, which was also adapted as a 1956 movie starring Gary Cooper, was praised for capturing the angst of suburbanites in the 1950s as they struggled to achieve the American dream of affluence while conforming to the oppressive corporate culture.
Though Wilson continued to write through the 1980s, he never duplicated the success of The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit; the sequel to the novel, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit II (1984), was a financial and critical disappointment. Somewhat more successful, however, was his novel A Summer Place (1958), which was also adapted into a film starring Sandra Dee.
In his later career, Wilson supplemented his fiction writing income by penning biographies and books on yachting history, as well as working as a writer-in-residence at Rollins College from 1981 to 1982 and as director of the Winter Park Artists Workshop from 1983 to 1985.
From 1984 to 1987 he was also a consultant to Philip Crosby Associates. Among the author’s other works are All the Best People (1970), Ice Brothers (1979), Pacific Interlude (1982), and the autobiographies Away from It All (1970) and What Shall We Wear to This Party?: The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit Twenty Years Before and After (1976).
Physical Characteristics:
Sloan Wilson suffered from alcoholism throughout his life. In later years, he suffered from Alzheimer's disease.
Connections
On February 4, 1941, Sloan Wilson married Elise Pickhardt. The two had three children: Lisa, Rebecca, David Sloan. In 1962 the couple divorced. In 1962 he married Betty Stephens. They had a daughter, Jessica.