William Faulkner Events

1897 Sep 25 William Faulkner Is Born
Novelist William Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi on September 25, 1897. He spent much of his youth in Oxford where his father was employed as the business manager for the Uni...
1919 William Faulkner Attends the University of Mississippi
Faulkner was raised in and heavily influenced by the state of Mississippi, as well as by the history and culture of the South as a whole. When he was four years old, his entire family mov...
1921 Dec
to 1924 Oct
William Faulkner Works as Postmaster of the University of Mississippi
Faulkner’s most notorious stint as a working man was his role of postmaster at the University of Mississippi post office, which incredibly he held for nearly three years. By all accounts,...
1926 'Soldier's Pay' Is Published
The plot of Soldiers' Pay revolves around the return of a wounded aviator home to a small town in Georgia following the conclusion of the First World War. He is escorted home by a veteran...
1927 Apr 30 'Mosquitoes' Is Published
Mosquitoes is a comic novel by the American author William Faulkner, published in 1927. It is the author's second novel. The story tells of the misadventures of passengers on a cruise shi...
1929 Jan 31 'Sartoris' Is Published
The novel deals with the decay of an aristocratic southern family just after the end of World War I. The wealthy Sartoris family of Jefferson, Mississippi, lives under the shadow of its d...
1929 Jun 20 William Faulkner Marries Estelle Oldham
Faulkner married Estelle in June 1929 at College Hill Presbyterian Church just outside of Oxford, Mississippi.[7] They honeymooned on the Mississippi Gulf Coast at Pascagoula, then return...
1929 Oct 7 'The Sound and The Fury' Is Published
The Sound and the Fury is a novel written by the American author William Faulkner. It employs a number of narrative styles, including the technique known as stream of consciousness, pione...
1930 William Faulkner purchases 'Rowan Oak'
Rowan Oak, also known as William Faulkner House, is William Faulkner's former home in Oxford, Mississippi. It is a primitive Greek Revival house built in the 1840s by Robert Sheegog. Faul...
1930 Oct 6 'As I Lay Dying' Is Published
As I Lay Dying is a novel by the American author William Faulkner. The novel was written in six weeks while Faulkner was working at a power plant, published in 1930, and described by Faul...
1931 Feb 9 'Sanctuary' Is Published
Sanctuary is a novel by the American author William Faulkner. It is considered one of his more controversial, given its theme of rape. First published in 1931, it was Faulkner's commercia...
1932 Oct 6 'Light In August' Is Published
Light in August is an exploration of racial conflict in the society of the Southern United States. Originally Faulkner planned to call the novel Dark House, which also became the working ...
1933 Apr 14 'Today We Live' Premieres in Theatres
Writing Credits: William Faulkner - (story "Turn About") Edith Fitzgerald - (screenplay) Dwight Taylor - (screenplay) William Faulkner - (dialogue) Cast (in credits order) ...
1933 Jun 24 William Faulkner's Daughter Jill Is Born
Faulkner’s MGM contract expired in May 1933, and with his temporary windfall he purchased a Waco-210 monoplane. In June, Estelle gave birth to Faulkner’s only surviving daughter, Jill. Th...
1935 Mar 25 'Pylon' Is Published
Pylon is a novel by the American author William Faulkner. Published in 1935, Pylon is set in New Valois, a fictionalized version of New Orleans. It is one of Faulkner's few novels set out...
1936 Jun 2 'The Road To Glory' Premieres In Theatres
Hard-drinking Captain La Roche (Warner Baxter) delivers the same hollow speech to each wave of fresh soldiers assigned to his command, only to see them senselessly slaughtered by the Germ...
1936 Oct 26 'Absalom, Absalom' Is Published
Absalom, Absalom! details the rise and fall of Thomas Sutpen, a white man born into poverty in Western Virginia who comes to Mississippi with the complementary aims of becoming rich and a...
1937 Jun 16 'Slave Ship' Premieres in New York
Slave Ship is a 1937 film directed by Tay Garnett, starring Warner Baxter and Wallace Beery. The supporting cast includes Mickey Rooney, George Sanders, Jane Darwell, and Joseph Schildkra...
1938 Feb 15 'The Unvanquished' Is Published
The Unvanquished is a novel by the American author William Faulkner, set in Yoknapatawpha County. It tells the story of the Sartoris family, who first appeared in the novel Sartoris (or F...
1939 Jan 19 'If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem' Is Published
Wild Palms/Old Man is a blend of two stories, a love story and a river story, entitled "Wild Palms" and "Old Man", respectively. Both stories tell us of a distinct relationship between a ...
1939 Jan 23 William Faulkner Appears on the Cover of Time Magazine
Random House retitles Faulkner’s latest novel, which he originally called “If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem.” It becomes The Wild Palms, and when it is published, Faulkner is featured on the c...
1940 Apr 1 'The Hamlet' Is Published
The Hamlet is the first of the "Snopes" trilogy, completed by The Town (1957), and The Mansion (1959). The novel follows the exploits of the Snopes family, beginning with Ab Snopes, wh...
1942 May 11 'Go Down, Moses' is Published
Although originally published in 1942 as Go Down, Moses and Other Stories (apparently against the desires of the author) Go Down, Moses may be considered a unified, though fragmented, nov...
1944 Oct 11 'To Have and Have Not' Premieres In New York
Although Howard Hawks had a high regard for Hemingway's works in general, he considered To Have and Have Not his worst book, a "bunch of junk," and told Hemingway so; Hawks and Hemingway ...
1946 Aug 23 The Big Sleep is Released
The Big Sleep is a 1946 film noir directed by Howard Hawks, the first film version of Raymond Chandler's 1939 novel of the same name. It stars Humphrey Bogart as detective Philip Marlowe ...
1948 Sep 27 'Intruder In The Dust' Is Published
The novel focuses on Lucas Beauchamp, a black farmer accused of murdering a white man. He is exonerated through the efforts of black and white teenagers and a spinster from a long-establi...
1949 William Faulkner is Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature
"for his powerful and artistically unique contribution to the modern American novel." —Nobel Foundation
1951 Sep 27 'Requiem For a Nun' Is Published
Requiem for a Nun is a book written by William Faulkner in 1951. Like many of Faulkner's works, Requiem experiments with narrative technique—the book is part novel, part play. The protago...
1954 Aug 2 'A Fable' Is Published
A Fable is a novel written in 1954 by the American author William Faulkner, which won him both the Pulitzer prize and the National Book Award in 1955. Despite these recognitions, however,...
1955 May William Faulkner Is Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for 'A Fable'
A Fable was conceived in 1943 during a discussion in wartime Hollywood among Faulkner, producer William Bacher, and director Henry Hathaway about a film on the Unknown Soldier. One propos...
1955 Jun 24 'Land of the Pharaohs' Premieres In Theatres
William Faulkner (written by) Harry Kurnitz (written by) Harold Jack Bloom (written by) Cast Jack Hawkins - Pharaoh Khufu Joan Collins - Princess Nellifer Dewey Martin - Senta ...
1957 May 1 'The Town' Is Published
The Town (1957) is the second novel in the Snopes trilogy that began with The Hamlet (included in Novels 1936–1940). Here the rise of the rapacious Flem Snopes and his extravagantly exten...
1959 Nov 13 'The Mansion' Is Published
The Mansion is a novel by the American author William Faulkner, written in 1959. It is the last in a trilogy of books about the fictional Snopes family of Mississippi, following The Hamle...
1962 Jun 4 'The Reivers' Is Published
The Reivers, published in 1962, is the last novel by the American author William Faulkner. The bestselling novel was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1963. Faulkner previously wo...
1962 Jul 6 William Faulkner Dies
Faulkner died on July 6, 1962, of a heart attack in Byhalia, Mississippi. He willed the major manuscripts and personal papers in his possession to the Albert and Shirley Small Special Col...
1963 William Faulkner Is Posthumously Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for 'The Reivers'
William Faulkner's fictional chronicle of Yoknapatawpha County draws to a close in this Library of America edition of his last three novels, rich with the accumulated history and lore of ...