was in 1945. The play never was performed and never published. Humphrey began to write stories and left New York City to write in Brewster, New York. There Humphrey worked on the farm belonging to Donald Peterson, the producer and director of The Ave Maria Hour on WMCA radio. Humphrey published The Last Husband and Other Stories, his first book of stories, in 1953. Humphrey secured a teaching post at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York in 1949, the same year he married Dorothy Feinman Cantine, a painter of considerable talent who had a daughter Toni. He taught at Bard until 1958 when the success of his first novel, Home from the Hill (1958), and its 1960 film adaptation, gave him enough money to quit teaching and devote himself to writing full-time. Career Humphrey wrote 13 books, including five novels, collections of short stories and a memoir. His first novel, Home from the Hill, was made into a 1960 MGM film. While the movie betrays the original intent of the author, and Humphrey claimed never to have seen it, the sale of the movie rights enabled the struggling Humphrey family to pursue a literary life. His second novel, The Ordways, was reviewed by the 'New York Times as "Funny, vivid and moving, this is a fine piece of work and a delight to read," and was compared to the writings of William Faulkner and Mark Twain. His books received high praise when they were first published, even from fellow writers. He went on to publish a dozen more books. Humphrey wrote fiction that addressed the Southern past. He once asserted, “I am a destroyer of myths. My whole work has shown the danger and falseness of myths..[especially] the myth of the South” (“Notes on the Orestia,” 38; MS at Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin). Home from the Hill (1958) is Humphrey’s first and most famous novel. It is the story of the aristocratic Hunnicutt family, a holdover from the Old South. The family is fated to end in destruction and destroyed—because of a moral corruption at its core. The novel Hostages to Fortune (1985) represents a return to the tragic mode. Humphrey’s first novel set outside the South, it portrays a man named Ben Curtis on the day he reenters life after a two-year descent into darkness resulting from his son’s suicide. His effort to