William Stoner enters the University of Missouri at nineteen to study agriculture. A seminar on English literature changes his life, and he never returns to work on his father's farm. Stoner becomes a teacher.

He marries the wrong woman. His life is quiet, and after his death, his colleagues remember him rarely. Yet with truthfulness, compassion and intense power, this novel uncovers a story of universal value - of the conflicts, defeats and victories of the human race that pass unrecorded by history - and in doing so reclaims the significance of an individual life.

'A beautiful, sad, utterly convincing account of an entire life' Ian McEwan

'A brilliant, beautiful, inexorably sad, wise and elegant novel' Nick Hornby

'It's simply a novel about a guy who goes to college and becomes a teacher. But its one of the most fascinating things that you've ever come across' Tom Hanks, Time

Introduced by John McGavern