Author Guide · Literary Fiction
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William Trevor Cox was born in Mitchelstown, County Cork, in 1928, the son of a Protestant bank official whose postings took the family from town to town across Ireland. He studied history at Trinity College Dublin, carved reliefs for churches as a sculptor, taught art in England and wrote advertising copy in London, where he began writing stories on the typewriter the job gave him. The Old Boys won the Hawthornden Prize in 1964 and let him write full time from a village in Devon. He went on to win the Whitbread Prize three times, to be shortlisted four times for the Booker Prize, and to be called by The New Yorker the greatest living writer of short stories in English. This guide covers his 12 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 12 key books · 1964–2018 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
William Trevor published 16 novels, the two novellas of Two Lives (1991) and twelve main collections of stories between 1958 and 2018. The best known are Felicia’s Journey (1994), Whitbread Book of the Year and a 1999 film by Atom Egoyan, Fools of Fortune (1983), The Story of Lucy Gault (2002) and the stories in The Ballroom of Romance (1972). Start with Felicia’s Journey, or with The Collected Stories if you want the form he called his own. Below are his 12 key books in order.
Where to Start with William Trevor
If you want the book everyone means
→ Felicia’s Journey (1994) — an Irish girl alone in the English Midlands.
If you want the stories
→ The Collected Stories (1992) — three decades of them in one volume.
If you want Ireland and its history
→ Fools of Fortune (1983) — a Cork family and the War of Independence.
If you want something short
→ Love and Summer (2009) — his last novel, about a summer love in a small Irish town.
12 William Trevor Books, in Order
The Old Boys
Elderly men who were at an English public school together feud over who will be president of their old boys’ association, and the old cruelties of school come back with them. It was his second novel and his breakthrough: it won the Hawthornden Prize, allowed him to leave advertising and write full time, and he adapted it for the stage.
The Ballroom of Romance
His second collection. In the title story Bridie, who has gone for years to a country dance hall hoping to find a husband to help on the family farm, sees that the men of her generation have emigrated or married, and that only Bowser Egan, a drinker, is left. Pat O’Connor’s 1982 television film, with Brenda Fricker as Bridie, won the BAFTA for Best Single Drama.
Angels at the Ritz
A collection of stories whose title story is set in England. It won the Royal Society of Literature award in 1975, and Graham Greene praised it as the best collection of stories since Joyce’s Dubliners.
The Children of Dynmouth
In a small English seaside town, Timothy Gedge, a lonely, unwanted boy, pries into the residents’ secrets and uses them to get what he wants. Trevor makes him more pitiful than wicked, though still capable of real harm. It won the Whitbread Prize for fiction and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
Fools of Fortune
The Quintons, a Protestant family at Kilneagh in County Cork, lose their house and much of the family to a reprisal during the War of Independence; the violence shapes the life of the son, Willie, and his love for his English cousin Marianne over the decades that follow. It won the Whitbread Novel Award, and Pat O’Connor filmed it in 1990.
Nights at the Alexandra
Harry, looking back as an old man, remembers a small Irish town during the Emergency, when Frau Messinger, an Englishwoman married to a German, lived there after leaving Nazi Germany. Her husband builds a cinema and names it after her; the boy goes to work there, against his parents’ wishes, but she dies before it opens and her husband leaves the town.
Two Lives
Two novellas in one volume. In Reading Turgenev, set near Wexford in the 1950s, Mary Louise Dallon marries Elmer Quarry, a draper, is undermined by his sisters, and finds refuge in her love for her cousin Robert and the Turgenev novels they read together; it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In My House in Umbria, Mrs Delahunty, a writer of romances, takes the survivors of a train bombing into her house in Italy; it was filmed for television in 2003 with Maggie Smith.
The Collected Stories
Almost 1,300 pages gathering his stories from his first collection, The Day We Got Drunk on Cake, to Family Sins (1990), including “The Ballroom of Romance”. A second, two-volume Collected Stories followed in 2009, and Selected Stories (2010) gathered the stories of his last four collections.
Felicia’s Journey
Felicia, a young pregnant Irish girl, crosses to the English Midlands to look for the father of her child, who has told her nothing of where he lives. She is taken up by Mr Hilditch, a solicitous, lonely catering manager whose kindness hides a dark past. It was Whitbread Book of the Year and Sunday Express Book of the Year, and Atom Egoyan filmed it in 1999.
The Story of Lucy Gault
In the summer of 1921, eight-year-old Lucy Gault refuses to leave Lahardane, her family’s house in the Irish countryside, as her parents prepare to go to England. Her plan to make them stay goes wrong, and one chance event shapes the lives of the Gaults for decades. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
Love and Summer
His last novel, about 200 pages long. In a small town in rural Ireland in the middle of the twentieth century, Ellie, a young married woman, falls in love over one summer with Florian, a young man who is about to leave the country. It was longlisted for the Booker Prize and shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award in 2011.
Last Stories
His final collection, published in 2018, two years after his death. Like his earlier collections, it is about ordinary people in small Irish and English places, at the point where the illusions that kept their lives bearable give way.
In What Order to Read William Trevor
None of Trevor’s books are sequels, so you can start anywhere. The novels fall roughly into two groups: the early English comedies of the 1960s and 1970s, from The Old Boys to The Children of Dynmouth, and the Irish novels that followed, from Fools of Fortune (1983) to Love and Summer (2009), which return again and again to Protestant big houses, small towns and the long shadow of history.
He thought of himself as a short-story writer first, and said his novels were short stories woven together. If you like the novels, go next to The Collected Stories, then to the later collections and Last Stories. Reading Turgenev, in Two Lives, sits between the two forms and is a good bridge.
A reading path
1. Felicia’s Journey (1994)
2. The Collected Stories (1992)
3. Fools of Fortune (1983)
4. The Story of Lucy Gault (2002)
5. Love and Summer (2009)
Everything Else William Trevor Published
Beyond the 12 key books: 29 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Other novels
9
9 books · 1958–1998
- 1958A Standard of Behaviourhis first novel, a comedy he later disowned
- 1965The Boarding-Houserival lodgers scheme over an unusual bequest
- 1966The Love Departmenta comic novel of London
- 1969Mrs Eckdorf in O’Neill’s Hotelshortlisted for the Booker Prize
- 1971Miss Gomez and the Brethrena novel
- 1973Elizabeth Alonea novel; he also adapted it for television
- 1980Other People’s Worldsa novel
- 1988The Silence in the GardenYorkshire Post Book of the Year
- 1998Death in Summera novel
Story collections
9
9 books · 1967–2007
- 1967The Day We Got Drunk on Cakehis first collection
- 1978Lovers of Their Timestories, including “Attracta”
- 1981Beyond the Palestories
- 1986The News from Irelandstories set in Ireland past and present
- 1990Family Sinsstories
- 1996After Rainstories
- 2000The Hill Bachelorsstories
- 2004A Bit on the Sidestories
- 2007Cheating at Canastastories
Smaller books and selections
7
7 books · 1973–2010
- 1973The Last Lunch of the Seasona short limited edition
- 1976Old School Tiesa short collection
- 1979The Distant Paststories
- 1992Outside Irelandselected stories
- 1996Cocktails at Doney’sstories
- 2009The Collected Storiestwo volumes
- 2010Selected Storiesstories from his last four collections
Nonfiction, anthologies and for children
4
4 books · 1984–1993
- 1984A Writer’s Irelandlandscape in literature
- 1989The Oxford Book of Irish Short Storiesan anthology he edited
- 1991Juliet’s Storya book for children
- 1993Excursions in the Real Worldmemoirs
The years · 1928–2016
Quick facts about William Trevor
- Known for
- Quiet, exact short stories and novels about lonely people in Irish and English towns, which made him one of the great short-story writers in English.
- 1928
- Born William Trevor Cox in Mitchelstown, County Cork
- 1964
- The Old Boys wins the Hawthornden Prize
- 1983
- Fools of Fortune, Whitbread Novel Award
- 2016
- Dies at home in Devon, aged 88
- Born
- 24 May 1928, Mitchelstown, County Cork, as William Trevor Cox; his father was a bank official
- Died
- 20 November 2016, at home in Devon, England, aged 88
- Education
- St Columba’s College, Dublin; Trinity College Dublin, degree in history (1950)
- Before writing
- Church sculptor, art teacher, then advertising copywriter in London
- Married
- Jane Ryan, in 1952; two sons, Patrick and Dominic
- Prizes
- Hawthornden Prize; Whitbread Prize three times; four Booker shortlists; David Cohen Prize (1999); four O. Henry Awards
- Honours
- Honorary CBE (1977); honorary KBE (2002); Saoi of Aosdána
The red mark is 1994: Felicia’s Journey, his Whitbread Book of the Year and his best-known novel.
How William Trevor Writes: The Art of the Glimpse
Trevor called the short story “the art of the glimpse”, and he described himself as a short-story writer who writes novels when he cannot get them into short stories. His subject is ordinary people at the edge of the lower middle classes, in Irish market towns and English suburbs, at the moment when the illusions that made their lives bearable stop working. “I’m very interested in the sadness of fate,” he told Publishers Weekly in 1983, “the things that just happen to people.” Anne Enright wrote that he was, above all, interested in loneliness.
He worked like the sculptor he had been, by cutting. For much of his life he was at his desk at four in the morning; he drafted on blue paper, a habit from his advertising days, typed on a manual Olivetti, and rewrote and cut until whole sections were gone, believing that what was left out mattered as much as what stayed. He told RTÉ that the most exciting part of writing was cutting. His drafts ran much longer than the published books.
He lived in England from 1954 but called himself “Irish in every vein”, and said he saw Ireland more clearly from a distance. The distance shows in his tone: no one is mocked, and the narration rarely judges. The early novels are dark English comedies; from Fools of Fortune on, his Irish fiction keeps returning to Protestant families, decaying houses and the way public history breaks into private lives.
Watch
William Trevor talks to Mavis Nicholson
On Thames Television’s Good Afternoon, first shown in December 1976, Trevor talks to Mavis Nicholson about how he decides whether a story will become a short story or a novel.
Frequently asked questions about William Trevor’s books
How many books has William Trevor written?
Sixteen novels, from A Standard of Behaviour (1958) to Love and Summer (2009), the two novellas of Two Lives (1991), and twelve main collections of new stories, from The Day We Got Drunk on Cake (1967) to Last Stories (2018). All are listed on this page, along with smaller story books, selections, two books of nonfiction, an anthology and a book for children. He also wrote plays for stage, radio and television.
What are William Trevor’s books in order?
The 12 key books are The Old Boys (1964), The Ballroom of Romance (1972), Angels at the Ritz (1975), The Children of Dynmouth (1976), Fools of Fortune (1983), Nights at the Alexandra (1987), Two Lives (1991), The Collected Stories (1992), Felicia’s Journey (1994), The Story of Lucy Gault (2002), Love and Summer (2009) and Last Stories (2018). The full list of his other novels and collections is in the bibliography above.
Where should I start with William Trevor?
With Felicia’s Journey (1994), his best-known novel, or with The Collected Stories (1992) if you want the short stories that made his name; “The Ballroom of Romance” is a good first story. For his Irish history, read Fools of Fortune; for something short, Love and Summer.
What is William Trevor’s most famous book?
Felicia’s Journey (1994). It was Whitbread Book of the Year and Sunday Express Book of the Year, and Atom Egoyan filmed it in 1999. Among his stories, the best known is “The Ballroom of Romance”, filmed for BBC television in 1982.
Did William Trevor win the Booker Prize?
No. He was shortlisted four times, for Mrs Eckdorf in O’Neill’s Hotel (1970), The Children of Dynmouth (1976), Reading Turgenev (1991) and The Story of Lucy Gault (2002), and longlisted for Love and Summer (2009). He did win the Whitbread Prize three times, for The Children of Dynmouth, Fools of Fortune and Felicia’s Journey.
Which William Trevor books have been filmed?
“The Ballroom of Romance” became a 1982 BBC television film directed by Pat O’Connor, with Brenda Fricker, which won the BAFTA for Best Single Drama. O’Connor also filmed Fools of Fortune (1990). Atom Egoyan filmed Felicia’s Journey (1999), and My House in Umbria was made for television in 2003 with Maggie Smith.
Was William Trevor a short-story writer or a novelist?
Both, but he saw himself as a short-story writer first. He said his novels were short stories woven together so that nobody notices. The New Yorker called him the greatest living writer of short stories in the English language, and he won four O. Henry Awards and, in 2013, the first Charleston-Chichester Award for a Lifetime’s Excellence in Short Fiction.
Why did William Trevor live in England?
He moved to England in 1954, with his wife Jane, because he could not find work in Ireland. He taught art, worked as a church sculptor and as an advertising copywriter, and after the success of The Old Boys settled in Devon, where he lived for the rest of his life. He still called himself “Irish in every vein”.
Is William Trevor still alive?
No. He died on 20 November 2016, at home in Devon, aged 88. His final collection, Last Stories, was published in 2018.
Footnotes
- William Trevor — Wikipedia
- William Trevor — Encyclopædia Britannica
- William Trevor — The Booker Prizes
- William Trevor: Writers are outsiders with no place in society — The Irish Times, 2016
- Relics (review of Two Lives) — The New York Review of Books, 1991
- William Trevor: A Sculptor of Words — Irish America, 2009
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“The novel imitates life, where the short story is bony, and cannot wander.”
— William Trevor, The Paris Review, “The Art of Fiction No. 108” (1989)
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