William Trevor Cox was born in Mitchelstown, County Cork, Ireland on May 24, 1928. He received a degree in history from Trinity College in 1950. Before becoming a full-time author in 1965, he worked as a sculptor, a teacher, and a copywriter at an advertising agency. He exhibited his sculptures in Dublin and England and was joint winner of the International Year of the Political Prisoner art competition in 1952.

His first novel, A Standard of Behaviour, was published in 1958. His other novels include Other People's Worlds, Nights at the Alexandra, The Silence in the Garden, The Story of Lucy Gault, My House in Umbria, and Love and Summer. He won the Hawthornden Prize in 1964 for The Old Boys, the Whitbread Award in 1976 for The Children of Dynmouth, the Whitbread Award in 1983 for Fools of Fortune, and the Whitbread Award in 1994 for Felicia's Journey.

His short story collections include The Day We Got Drunk on Cake and Other Stories, The Ballroom of Romance and Other Stories, Beyond the Pale, A Bit on the Side, Cheating at Canasta, and The Mark-2 Wife. The Hill Bachelors received the 2001 Irish Times Irish Literature Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award for Short Stories. He received the Allied Irish Banks' Prize in 1976, The Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence in 1992, the David Cohen British Literature Prize in 1999, and the Bob Hughes Lifetime Achievement Award in Irish Literature in 2008. In 1977, he was awarded an honorary CBE in recognition of his services to literature. He died on November 20, 2016 at the age of 88.

(Bowker Author Biography)