John Hoyer Updike was born on March 18, 1932 in Reading, PA, a mid-sized manufacturing town located in the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch country. His mother, Linda Grace (Hoyer) Updike, was a homemaker with artistic aspirations, while his father, Wesley Russell Updike, was a beleaguered, though beloved, high-school science teacher. An only child, Updike spent the first 13 years of his life in the small town of Shillington, PA, in a tight-knit household that also included his mother’s parents, John and Katherine Hoyer. A trolley line ran right past his house, while Shillington High School, where his father worked, sat nestled just behind the backyard. The family did not even own a car. In his 1989 memoir, Self-Consciousness, Updike w

This article in full comprises 2843 words but only the first 150 or so words are available to non-members.

All our articles have been written recently by experts in their field, more than 95% of them university professors. To read about membership, please click here.

First published 18 March 2004 ; revised 15 February 2009

Citation: Boswell, Marshall. "John Updike". The Literary Encyclopedia. 18 March 2004.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4502, accessed 20 November 2009.]