1/24/23, 12:56 AM William Faulkner - Biographical

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William Faulkner
Biographical

W
illiam Faulkner (1897-1962), who came from an old
southern family, grew up in Oxford, Mississippi. He joined
the Canadian, and later the British, Royal Air Force during
the First World War, studied for a while at the University of
Mississippi, and temporarily worked for a New York bookstore and a New
Orleans newspaper. Except for some trips to Europe and Asia, and a few
brief stays in Hollywood as a scriptwriter, he worked on his novels and
short stories on a farm in Oxford.

In an attempt to create a saga of his own, Faulkner has invented a host of

characters typical of the historical growth and subsequent decadence of the
South. The human drama in Faulkner’s novels is then built on the model of
the actual, historical drama extending over almost a century and a half Each story and each novel
contributes to the construction of a whole, which is the imaginary Yoknapatawpha County and its
inhabitants. Their theme is the decay of the old South, as represented by the Sartoris and Compson
families, and the emergence of ruthless and brash newcomers, the Snopeses. Theme and technique – the
distortion of time through the use of the inner monologue are fused particularly successfully in The
Sound and the Fury (1929), the downfall of the Compson family seen through the minds of several
characters. The novel Sanctuary (1931) is about the degeneration of Temple Drake, a young girl from a
distinguished southern family. Its sequel, Requiem For A Nun (1951), written partly as a drama, centered
on the courtroom trial of a Negro woman who had once been a party to Temple Drake’s debauchery. In
Light in August (1932), prejudice is shown to be most destructive when it is internalized, as in Joe
Christmas, who believes, though there is no proof of it, that one of his parents was a Negro. The theme
of racial prejudice is brought up again in Absalom, Absalom! (1936), in which a young man is rejected by
his father and brother because of his mixed blood. Faulkner’s most outspoken moral evaluation of the
relationship and the problems between Negroes and whites is to be found in Intruder In the Dust (1948).

In 1940, Faulkner published the first volume of the Snopes trilogy, The Hamlet, to be followed by two
volumes, The Town (1957) and The Mansion (1959), all of them tracing the rise of the insidious Snopes
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family to positions of power and wealth in the community. The reivers, his last – and most humorous –
work, with great many similarities to Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, appeared in 1962, the year of
Faulkner’s death.

From Nobel Lectures, Literature 1901-1967, Editor Horst Frenz, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1969

This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and first published in the book series Les Prix
Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown
above.

William Faulkner died on July 6, 1962.

Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1950

To cite this section

MLA style: William Faulkner – Biographical. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2023. Wed. 25 Jan 2023.
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William Faulkner
Facts

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1/24/23, 12:56 AM William Faulkner - Biographical

Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive.

William Faulkner
The Nobel Prize in Literature 1949

Born: 25 September 1897, New Albany, MS, USA

Died: 6 July 1962, Byhalia, MS, USA

Residence at the time of the award: USA

Prize motivation: “for his powerful and artistically unique contribution to the modern American novel”

Language: English

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William Faulkner received his Nobel Prize one year later, in 1950.

Prize share: 1/1

Life

During William Faulkner’s upbringing in Mississippi, his mother Maud, grandmother Leila and the
family’s African-American nanny, Caroline “Callie” Barr, played an important role in his artistic
development. Maud and Leila painted, photographed and read, and Faulkner’s lifelong relationship with
“Callie” opened his eyes to injustice, racism and sexism. Yoknapatawpha County, his fictional literary
universe, resembled the surroundings in which Faulkner grew up. Writing about a familiar environment
helped him find his voice and become an experimental writer, prepared to take literary risks.

Work

William Faulkner generally is regarded as one of the most significant American writers of all time.
Faulkner wrote 13 novels and many short stories but started as a poet. With his breakthrough novel, The
Sound and the Fury, he began to use stream of consciousness to portray a character’s flow of inner
thoughts. His books often are told from the point of view of several characters and contain accurately
rendered colloquialisms combined with long sentences full of imagery and language that is sometimes
surreal.

To cite this section

MLA style: William Faulkner – Facts. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2023. Wed. 25 Jan 2023.
<https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1949/faulkner/facts/>

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