William faulkner facts for kids

William Cuthbert Faulkner September 25, — July 6, was an American writer known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County , based on Lafayette County, Mississippi , where Faulkner spent most of his life. A Nobel laureate , Faulkner is one of the most celebrated writers of American literature and often is considered the greatest writer of Southern literature.

Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi , and his family moved to Oxford, Mississippi , when he was a child. Returning to Oxford, he attended the University of Mississippi for three semesters before dropping out. He moved to New Orleans , where he wrote his first novel Soldiers' Pay He went back to Oxford and wrote Sartoris , his first work set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County.

In , he published The Sound and the Fury. The following year, he wrote As I Lay Dying. Later that decade, he wrote Light in August , Absalom, Absalom!

William faulkner education

He also worked as a screenwriter, contributing to Howard Hawks 's To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep ; the former film, adapted from a novel by Ernest Hemingway , is the only film with contributions by two Nobel laureates. Faulkner's renown reached its peak upon the publication of Malcolm Cowley 's The Portable Faulkner and his being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for "his powerful and unique contribution to the modern American novel.

Faulkner died from a heart attack on July 6, , following a fall from his horse the prior month. Ralph Ellison called him "the greatest artist the South has produced". His family was upper middle-class, but "not quite of the old feudal cotton aristocracy ". After Maud rejected Murry's plan to become a rancher in Texas, the family moved to Oxford , Mississippi in , where Faulkner's father established a livery stable and hardware store before becoming the University of Mississippi 's business manager.

Except for short periods elsewhere, Faulkner lived in Oxford for the rest of his life.