William Faulkner (1897-1962) was an American novelist who in 1949 received the Nobel prize for literature. He was born in New Albany, Miss. He grew up in a neighboring city, Oxford, Miss., which served as a prototype for the setting of his later novels, a city that he called Jefferson. His family, members of the "shabby gentility" ruined by the Civil War, was the model for the Sartoris family in his many novels about the South.
During World War I Faulkner enlisted with the Canadian air force and served in France. After the war he returned to Oxford and sporadically attended the University of Mississippi there during 1919 and 1921. He had never finished high school, but the usual requirement of high school graduation was waived, largely because he was a World War I veteran. He never obtained his college degree. In 1922 he published his first work, a poem in a literary magazine.
Although Faulkner wrote mostly in prose, his first published book was a collection of poems, The Marble Faun. His first novel was Soldier's Pay. The novel Sartoris was the first of many works dealing with life in the South.
The Sound and the Fury was his first novel written in the distinctive style that characterizes much of his work. The publishers rejected it at first. The revised book was published in 1929 and established his renown as a powerful writer. Faulkner's first financial success was Sanctuary. Requiem for a Nun is a sequel to Sanctuary.
Among his other works are As I Lay Dying; These Thirteen (short stories); Idyll in the Desert; Light in August; Pylon; Absalom, Absalom; The Unvanquished; The Wild Palms; The Hamlet; Go Down Moses and Other Stories; Intruder in the Dust; A Fable; and The Town.
