William Faulkner Biography

American Novelist Famous for The Sound and the Fury

Oct 16, 2008 Tel Asiado

Brief biography of William Faulkner, influential American novelist and short-story writer of the 20th century, known for his fictional Yoknapatawpha County.

American author William Faulkner, an important novelist of the 20th century, is famous for two novels: The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying. Both books use the 'stream of consciousness' technique.

He was a Nobel Prize laureate for literature in 1949 and a Pulitzer Prize winner for A Fable, and The Reivers.

In his stories about fictional Yoknapatawpha County, an imaginary rural Southern community based on his own hometown, he used various writing styles to explore family relationships and most especially to depict racial tensions in the South, which at that time was racially segregated, and slavery at its height.

Early Life of William Faulkner

William Faulkner (original name, William Cuthbert Falkner) was born in New Albany, Mississippi, on September 25, 1897. His family settled in Oxford Mississippi when he was five, the town where he lived most of his life. One of his interests was horses and he liked riding them. On the other hand, he found formal studies boring and left school when he was 17 years old.

With World War I in Europe, Faulkner went to Canada and trained as a fighter pilot with the Royal Air Force but the war ended before he saw any action. After the war he studied at the University of Mississippi for a short time, also lived in New York in the early 1920s. He was 27 years old when he published his first book The Marble Faun, a collection of poems.

Novelist Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha County

For a while Faulkner lived in New Orleans, where he completed his first novel Soldier's Pay, followed by Mosquitoes. In 1929 he married and took a nightshift job in a power plant. In his third novel, Sartoris, Faulkner created Yoknapatawpha County, the fictional setting of his later works. It was this time that he also wrote As I Lay Dying in six weeks, writing from midnight until four each morning.

In novels such as The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying, Faulkner employed the new stream-of-consciousness technique to illustrate the conflicting feeling of his characters. Faulkner died of heart attack on July 6, 1962, aged 64.

Faulkner Recognition and Awards

He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1955 for his novel A Fable, and another in 1963 (a year after his death), for The Reivers. Along with Mark Twain, Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams, Faulkner is considered one of the most important American Southern writers.

Works by William Faulkner

• The Marble Faun, 1924, collection of poems
• Soldier's Pay, 1926
• Mosquitoes, 1927
• Sartoris, 1929
• The Sound and the Fury, 1929
• As I Lay Dying, 1930
• Sanctuary, 1931
• Light in August, 1932
• Absalom, Absalom!, 1936
• The Hamlet, 1940
• Intruder in the Dust, 1948
• A Fable, 1954
• The Town, 1957
• The Reivers, 1962

Sources:

Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thinkers, edited by Alan Bullock and R.B. Woodings, London, 1983

Illustrated Biographical Dictionary, edited by John Clark, Chancellor Press, London, 1994

Larousse Dictionary of Writers, edited by Rosemary Goring (1994)

The A-Z of Great Writers by Tom Payne, Carlton, 1997

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William Faulkner, 20th Century American Novelist