William Faulkner Biography and latest books by William Faulkner

William Cuthbert Faulkner (September 25, 1897 — July 6, 1962) was an American writer of novels, short stories, poetry and occasional screenplays. Most of his works are based in his native state of Mississippi. Faulkner is considered one of the most important writers of the Southern literature of the United States, along with Mark Twain, Robert Penn Warren, Flannery O\'Connor, Harper Lee and Tennessee Williams. Though his work was published as early as 1919 (largely during the 1920s and 1930s) Faulkner was relatively unknown until receiving the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature.

William Cuthbert Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi, the first of four sons to Murry Cuthbert Faulkner and Maud Butler. He had three younger brothers: Murry Charles "Jack" Faulkner, author John Faulkner and Dean Swift Faulkner.

Faulkner was born and raised in, and heavily influenced by, his home state of Mississippi, and the history and culture of the American South altogether. Only four days prior to his fifth birthday, the Faulkner family settled in Oxford, Mississippi on September 21, 1902, where he resided on and off for the remainder of his life.

In the early 1940s, Howard Hawks invited Faulkner to come to Hollywood to become a screenwriter for the films Hawks was directing. Faulkner happily accepted because he badly needed the money, and Hollywood paid well. Faulkner contributed to the scripts for the films Hawks made from Raymond Chandler\'s The Big Sleep and Ernest Hemingway\'s To Have and Have Not.

Personal life
As a teenager in Oxford, Faulkner dated Estelle Oldham, the popular daughter of Major Lemuel and Lida Oldham, and believed he would some day marry her. However, Estelle dated other boys during their romance, and one of them, Cornell Franklin, ended up proposing marriage to her before Faulkner did, in 1918.

Estelle\'s parents insisted she marry Cornell. Fortunately for Faulkner, Estelle\'s marriage to Franklin fell apart ten years later, and she was divorced in April 1929. Faulkner married Estelle in June 1929 at College Hill Presbyterian Church just outside of Oxford, Mississippi. In 1930 Faulkner purchased the antebellum home Rowan Oak, known at that time as The Bailey Place. He and his daughter, Jill, lived there until after her mother\'s death. The property was sold to the University of Mississippi in 1972.

The house and furnishings are maintained much as they were in Faulkner\'s day. Faulkner\'s scribblings are still preserved on the wall there, including the day-by-day outline covering that he wrote out on the walls of his study to help him keep track of the plot twists in the novel A Fable.

Faulkner is known to have had several extramarital affairs. One was with Howard Hawks\'s secretary and script girl, Meta Carpenter. Another, from 1949-53, was with a young writer, Joan Williams, who made her relationship with Faulkner the subject of her 1971 novel, The Wintering.

When Faulkner visited Stockholm in December 1950 to receive the Nobel Prize, he met Else Jonsson (1912–1996) and they had an affair that lasted until the end of 1953. Else was the widow of journalist Thorsten Jonsson, reporter for Dagens Nyheter in New York 1943–1946, who had interviewed Faulkner in 1946 and introduced his works to the Swedish readers. At the banquet in 1950 where they met, publisher Tor Bonnier referred to Else as widow of the man responsible for Faulkner being awarded the prize. Faulkner also had a romance with Jean Stein, an editor, author, and daughter of movie mogul Jules Stein

Writing
From the early 1920s to the outbreak of World War II, when Faulkner left for California, he published 13 novels and numerous short stories. This body of work formed the basis of his reputation and led to him being awarded the Nobel Prize at age 52. This prodigious output, mainly driven by an obscure writer\'s need for money, includes his most celebrated novels such as The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930), Light in August (1932), and Absalom, Absalom! (1936). Faulkner was also a prolific writer of short stories.

His first short story collection, These 13 (1931), includes many of his most acclaimed stories, including A Rose for Emily, Red Leaves, That Evening Sun, and Dry September. Faulkner set many of his short stories and novels in Yoknapatawpha County.

Faulkner was known for his experimental style with meticulous attention to diction and cadence. In contrast to the minimalist understatement of his contemporary Ernest Hemingway, Faulkner made frequent use of stream of consciousness in his writing, and wrote often highly emotional, subtle, complex, and sometimes Gothic or grotesque stories of a wide variety of characters including former slaves or descendants of slaves, poor white, agrarian, or working-class Southerners, and Southern aristocrats.