Edwin W. (Edwin Wiley) Fuller

Born in Louisburg, North Carolina, in 1847, Edwin Wiley Fuller grew up in a home that encouraged his literary interests. He studied first at the University of North Carolina and later at the University of Virginia, and from an early age he was known for both poetry and prose.

Fuller published The Angel in the Cloud and is best remembered for Sea-Gift (1873), a novel noted for its picture of campus life at Chapel Hill and its connections to the Civil War South. Because he drew on places and experiences close to his own life, his writing often feels personal as well as historical.

He died in 1876 at just twenty-eight years old, leaving a small body of work and the sense of a talent cut short. Even so, his books have continued to interest readers who enjoy overlooked nineteenth-century American writers, regional literature, and stories shaped by memory, youth, and loss.