Of Time and the River is an autobiographical novel, the continuation of the story of Eugene Gant, detailing his early and mid-twenties. During that time Eugene attends Harvard University, moves to New York City, teaches English at a university there, and travels overseas with his friend Francis Starwick.

Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938) was an American novelist of the early twentieth century. He is known for mixing highly original, poetic, rhapsodic, and impressionistic prose with autobiographical writing. His books, written and published from the 1920s to the 1940s, vividly reflect on American culture and the mores of that period, filtered through Wolfe's sensitive, sophisticated, and hyper-analytical perspective.