Important Dates in the Life of Walker Percy (1916-1990)
From his childhood through his career as a celebrated writer and philosopher
Childhood

- 1916 – May 28, birth in Birmingham, AL
- 1929 – July 9, father's death by suicide (age 13)
- 1930 – residence with mother's family in Athens, GA
- 1931 – April 2, death of mother in an automobile accident (age 15)
- 1932 – residence with father's first cousin, William Alexander Percy ("Uncle Will"), Greenville, MS, author of Lanterns on the Levee; Percy develops start of life-long friendship with author Shelby Foote
- 1934 – enters The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, studies Chemistry
- 1935 – publishes essay showing knowledge of movies
Training, Recovery, and Discovery
- 1937 – graduation from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a major in Chemistry; begins medical school at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City; beginning of three years of psychoanalysis
- 1941 – graduation from Columbia University, M.D. (age 25); begins residency at Bellevue Hospital, New York City, as pathologist
- 1942 – January 21, death of William Alexander Percy from stroke; Percy's onset of bout with tuberculosis; spends two years at Saranac Lake Sanatorium
- 1944 – teaches pathology at Columbia, but tuberculosis reoccurs; enters Gaylord Farm Sanatorium in Wallingam, CT
- 1945 – end of World War II; residence in New Mexico with Shelby Foote, high school companion
- 1946 – November 7, marriage to Mary Bernice ("Bunt") Townsend (age 30) in New Orleans; residence in Sewanee, TN
- 1947 – conversion to Catholicism; residence in New Orleans; adopt daughter Mary Pratt Percy
- 1950 – beginning of residence in Covington, LA, across Lake Ponchartrain from New Orleans, La.
On the Limitations of Science
"What I am about to say is no secret to the scientist, but it is not generally known by the layman. The secret is simply this: the scientist, in practicing the scientific method, cannot utter a single word about an individual thing or creature insofar as it is an individual, but only insofar as it resembles other individuals."
— Walker Percy
Writer: Philosopher and Novelist
- 1954 – publication of first journal essay (age 38); birth daughter Anne Boyd Percy
- 1961 – publication of first novel, The Moviegoer (read a brief summary)
- 1962 – awarded the National Book Award for The Moviegoer
- 1966 – The Last Gentleman (novel)
- 1971 – Love in the Ruins (novel)
- 1975 – The Message in the Bottle (essay collection)
- 1977 – Lancelot (novel)
- 1980 – The Second Coming (novel)
- 1983 – Lost in the Cosmos (non-fiction)
- 1987 – The Thanatos Syndrome (novel)
- 1989 – delivery of the 18th Annual Jefferson Lecture, National Endowment for the Humanities, Washington, DC
- 1990 – May 10, death, from cancer, Covington, La.
- 1991 – Signposts in a Strange Land (posthumous essay collection)
- 1995 – A Thief of Peirce: The Letters of Kenneth Laine Ketner and Walker Percy (posthumous correspondence collection)
- 1996 – The Correspondence of Shelby Foote and Walker Percy (posthumous correspondence collection)
- 2019 – Symbol and Existence: A Study of Meaning (posthumous non-fiction book)
Learn more:
*Read descriptions of all Books by Percy.
*Interact with an Allegorical Portrait of Walker Percy.