William Stoner enters the University of Missouri at nineteen to study agriculture. A seminar on English literature changes his life & he never returns to work on his father's farm. Stoner becomes a teacher. He marries the wrong woman. His life is quiet & after his death his colleagues remember him rarely. Yet with truthfulness compassion & intense power this novel uncovers a story of universal value. Stoner tells of the conflicts defeats & victories of the human race that pass unrecorded by history & reclaims the significance of an individual life. A reading experience like no other itself a paean to the power of literature it is a novel to be savoured.