In the Beauty of the Lilies: Penguin Modern Classics

John Updike was born in 1932 in Shillington, Pennsylvania. He is the author of over fifty books, includingThe Poorhouse Fair;the Rabbit series (Rabbit, Run;Rabbit Redux;Rabbit Is Rich; Rabbit At Rest);Marry Me;The Witches of Eastwick,which was made into a major feature film;Memories of the Ford Administration; Brazil; In the Beauty of the Lilies;Toward the End of Time;Gertrude and Claudius;andSeek My Face.He has written a number of collections of short stories, includingThe Afterlife and Other StoriesandLicks of Love, which includes a final Rabbit story,Rabbit Remembered.His essays and criticism first appeared in publications such as theNew Yorkerand theNew York Review of Books, and are now collected into numerous volumes.Collected Poems 1953-1993brings together almost all of his verse, and a new edition of hisSelected Poemsis forthcoming from Hamish Hamilton.

His novels, stories, and non-fiction collections have won have won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the American Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Rosenthal Award and the Howells Medal.

Updike graduated from Harvard College in 1954, and spent a year at Oxford's Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. From 1955 to 1957 he was a member of staff at the New Yorker, and he lived in Massachusetts from 1957 until his death in January 2009.