Biography

William Faulkner was born September 25, 1897 in New Albany, Mississippi. His family moved to Oxford, Mississippi, when he was young, and he dropped out of high school in 1915. In 1918, he lied about his age and joined the Royal Canadian Airforce, but never saw combat. His childhood sweetheart, Estelle Oldham, married another man and had children by him, but they divorced and she and Faulkner were wed in 1929, the year that he published The Sound and the Fury. Despite his critical success, he never was able to make very much money; he moved to Hollywood and wrote screenplays. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950 and died in Byhalia, Mississippi on July 6, 1962.

Blotner, Joseph. Faulkner: A Biography. New York: Vintage, 1991.
Faulkner, John. My Brother Bill. Athens: Hill Press, 1998
Williamson, Joel. William Faulkner and Southern History New York: Oxford UP, 1993.