John Knowles was born in 1926 in Fairmont, West Virginia. At age 15, he became a student at Phillips Exeter Academy, a well-known boarding school in New Hampshire that is not unlike Devon, the school setting of A Separate Peace. Knowles graduated from Exeter in 1945, but did not immediately proceed to college. Instead, he joined the war effort as part of the U.S. Army Air Force's Aviation Cadet Program, and became a student at Yale University after completing several months in the program. He obtained his bachelor's degree from Yale in 1949.
After graduation, Knowles traveled to Europe and worked as a journalist until the mid 1950's, during which time he also wrote various freelance...
