George Edgar Wolfe was born in Ottawa, Franklin County, Kansas in 1906. He received his bachelors from the University of Kansas in 1928 and returned for his masters in 1947, serving as a professor of creative writing thereafter at KU from 1949 to 1977, gaining full professor status in 1970.

In between earning his undergraduate and graduate degrees, Wolfe taught at a high school in rural South Dakota as well as in Kansas, also working as a door-to-door salesman. In 1929 he married Nina Ruth Winters, the daughter of Augustus P. and Bertha (Riant) Winters, and during the Great Depression he was employed as a case worker for the Kansas Emergency Relief Commission.

Wolfe published short stories, poetry, an English textbook, a novel, and a novella during his lifetime. Widow Man was on the New York Herald-Tribune's list of best books for the year 1953. Other published items include the textbook Write Now (1954), the novella Trial by Ice (1961), To All the Islands Now (1986), and the poetry collection The Almond Tree (1989).

Nina Winters passed away in 1973. In 1977 Wolfe remarried to Marguerite Everett. Edgar Wolfe passed away in 1989. His legacy includes an award for creative writing given to undergraduate students for a work of fiction established at the University of Kansas in his honor.