Analysis of a Separate Peace by John Knowles Telgen states that John Knowles was born on September 16, 1926 in Fairmont, West Virginia. At the age of fifteen, Knowles attended the prestigious Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. The Devon school, where most of the action in A Separate Peace takes place, is based in Phillips Exeter. After graduating from Exeter, Knowles entered Yale University for the fall semester of 1944 before joining the U.S. Air Force. After being discharged from the service, he returned to Yale and continued his studies. In 1449 Knowles graduated with a degree in English. In 1953, Story Magazine published his first story, A Turn in the Sun. During the 1950s Knowles began working on the novel that would become his most famous, A Separate Peace. However, publishing the book was not at all easy. Handing the manuscript to a literary agent, Knowles saw his book rejected by eleven publishers. Finally, in 1959, the London publisher Secker and Warburg agreed to publish the British edition of the novel. After A Separate Peace, Knowles published other novels, including Morning in Antibes, The Paragon, and A Vein of Riches. In 1981, Knowles released Peace Breaks Out; the sequel to A Separate Peace. Although A Separate Peace did not immediately become a "best-seller", it gradually became a commercial success, selling more than nine million copies (Telgen 241). Gene Forrester returns to the campus of the Devon School, an all-boys preparatory school in rural New Hampshire. Two places have a mysterious meaning for him, the first is a marble staircase inside a classroom. The second is under a tree growing near the River Devon. After staying outside, time travels back fifteen years to when Gene was still a schoolboy and standing near that same tree. His friend Finny urges him to climb its branches and jump off to simulate abandoning a torpedoed ship. At that moment, World War II is underway in the outside world. Despite his fear, Gene jumps out of the branches and jumps into the river with Finny. During a class in the summer of 1942, Gene becomes increasingly paranoid about Finny, who is also his roommate. He is the best at every type of sport while Gene excels at academics and is not very athletic at all.