Sound and the Fury

by William Faulkner

Published 12 February 1966
Retells the tragic times of the Compson family, including beautiful, rebellious Caddy; manchild Benjy; haunted, neurotic Quentin; Jason, the brutal cynic; and Dilsey, their black servant.

Town

by William Faulkner

Published 12 May 1957

This is the second volume of Faulkner’s trilogy about the Snopes family, his symbol for the grasping, destructive element in the post-bellum South. Like its predecessor, The Hamlet, and its successor, The Mansion, The Town is completely self-contained, but it gains resonance from being read with the other two....

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The Unvanquished

by William Faulkner

Published June 1967
Set in Mississippi during the Civil War and Reconstruction, THE UNVANQUISHED focuses on the Sartoris family, who, with their code of personal responsibility and courage, stand for the best of the Old South's traditions.

Intruder in the Dust

by William Faulkner

Published 12 September 1948
A classic Faulkner novel which explores the lives of a family of characters in the South. An aging black who has long refused to adopt the black's traditionally servile attitude is wrongfully accused of murdering a white man.

As I Lay Dying

by William Faulkner

Published 1 January 1930

“I set out deliberately to write a tour-de-force. Before I ever put pen to paper and set down the first word I knew what the last word would be and almost where the last period would fall.” —William Faulkner on As I Lay Dying
 
As I Lay Dying is Faulkner’s...

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The Mansion

by William Faulkner

Published 12 October 1959
The third volume in Faulkner's Snopes trilogy, tracing the downfall of that family.

Requiem for a Nun

by William Faulkner

Published 12 September 1951

'The past is never dead. It's not even past.'

Nancy, a black nursemaid, is about to be hanged for killing her mistress's baby. The mother, Temple Drake, knows the reason why. The night before the execution, a lawyer pleads with Temple to intercede, but will the past allow for justice...

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Absalom, Absalom!

by William Faulkner

Published 1 January 1951

“Read, read, read. Read everything—trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out the window.”...

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The Hamlet

by William Faulkner

Published 12 April 1940
The Hamlet, the first novel of Faulkner's Snopes trilogy, is both an ironic take on classical tragedy and a mordant commentary on the grand pretensions of the antebellum South and the depths of its decay in the aftermath of war and Reconstruction. It tells of the advent and the...Read more

Sanctuary

by William Faulkner

Published 12 April 1966
A powerful novel examining the nature of evil, informed by the works of T. S. Eliot and Freud, mythology, local lore, and hardboiled detective fiction. Sanctuary is the dark, at times brutal, story of the kidnapping of Mississippi debutante Temple Drake, who introduces her own form of venality into the...Read more

Three Famous Short Novels

by William Faulkner

Published 1 February 1958
“You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.” —William Faulkner
 
These short works offer three different approaches to Faulkner, each representative of his work as a whole. Spotted Horses is a hilarious account of a horse auction, and pits the...Read more

A Fable

by William Faulkner

Published 12 August 1954

This novel won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in 1955. An allegorical story of World War I, set in the trenches in France and dealing ostensibly with a mutiny in a French regiment, it was originally considered a sharp departure for Faulkner. Recently it has...

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Knight's Gambit

by William Faulkner

Published 1 October 1953

Gavin Stevens, the wise and forbearing student of crime and of the folk ways of Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, plays the major role in these six stories of violence. In each, Stevens’sharp insights and ingenious detection uncover the underlying motives.


Flags in the Dust

by William Faulkner

Published 12 July 1973
The complete text of Faulkner’s third novel, published for the first time in 1973, appeared with his reluctant consent in a much cut version in 1929 as Sartoris.

Go Down, Moses

by William Faulkner

Published 12 May 1942

“I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.” —William Faulkner, on receiving the Nobel Prize
 
Go Down, Moses is...

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Light in August

by William Faulkner

Published 16 November 1965

“Read, read, read. Read everything—trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out the window.”...

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Pylon

by William Faulkner

Published 12 October 1965
One of the few of William Faulkner’s works to be set outside his fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Pylon, first published in 1935, takes place at an air show in a thinly disguised New Orleans named New Valois. An unnamed reporter for a local newspaper tries to understand a very modern...Read more

Big Woods

by William Faulkner

Published 26 April 1994
"The Bear, " "The Old People, " "A Bear Hunt, " "Race at Morning"--some of Nobel Prize-winning author William Faulkner's most famous stories are collected in this volume--in which he observed, celebrated, and mourned the fragile otherness that is nature, as well as the cruelty and humanity of men....Read more

The Wild Palms

by William Faulkner

Published 31 October 1995
In this feverishly beautiful novel—originally titled If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem—William Faulkner interweaves two narratives, each wholly absorbing in its own right, each subtly illuminating the other. In New Orleans in 1937, a man and a woman embark on a headlong flight into the wilderness of illicit passion, fleeing...Read more

The Reivers

by William Faulkner

Published 1 September 1992
One of Faulkner’s comic masterpieces, The Reivers is a picaresque that tells of three unlikely car thieves from rural Mississippi. Eleven-year-old Lucius Priest is persuaded by Boon Hogganbeck, one of his family’s retainers, to steal his grandfather’s car and make a trip to Memphis. The Priests’ black coachman, Ned...Read more