John knowles author biography graphic organizer

The American author John Knowles was born in in Fairmont, West Virginia. Both Knowles’s father—who worked in the coal industry—and his mother were originally from Massachusetts. According to Knowles, his parents felt that the preparatory schools of the Northeast were the only institutions offering a genuinely broad education.

Thus, Knowles’s brother enrolled at Mercersburg Academy in Pennsylvania, attending Dartmouth College afterward in New Hampshire. Knowles was also expected to continue this tradition and head to Mercersburg but found an academic prospectus for Phillips Exeter Academy with an accompanying application form and, in his own words, “just for the hell of it, filled it out and mailed it.”

Consequently, at the age of 15, he enrolled as a student at Phillips Exeter Academy, a well-known boarding school in New Hampshire.

This academy bears a striking resemblance to Devon, the fictional school that features in his critically a John Knowles | A Separate Peace, Coming of Age | Britannica BUBAN