These four novels show one of America's greatest writers at the height of his powers. Presented in authoritative new texts, they explore the struggles of characters in a South caught between a romantic and a tragic past and the corrupting enticements of the present. Quentin Compson and his Harvard roomate re-create the story of the insanely ambitious patriarch Thomas Sutpen--and discover that his grief, pride, and doom are the inescapable legacy of a past that is not dead. "The Unvanquished" recounts the ordeals and triumphs of the Sartoris family during and after the Civil War. In "If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem" (first published as "The Wild Palms"), paired stories tell of desperate lovers and a fleeing convict. In "The Hamlet," the outrageous scheming energy of Flem Snopes and his clan is vividly and hilariously juxtaposed with the fragile community and customs of Frenchman's bend, Mississippi.
Born in 1897 in New Albany, Mississippi, William Faulkner was the son of a family proud of their prominent role in the history of the south. He grew up in Oxford, Mississippi, and left high school at fifteen to work in his grandfather's bank.
Rejected by the US military in 1915, he joined the Canadian flyers with the RAF, but was still in training when the war ended. Returning home, he studied at the University of Mississippi and visited Europe briefly in 1925.
His first poem was published in The New Republic in 1919. His first book of verse and early novels followed, but his major work began with the publication of The Sound and the Fury in 1929. As I Lay Dying (1930), Sanctuary (1931), Light in August (1932), Absalom, Absalom! (1936) and The Wild Palms (1939) are the key works of his great creative period leading up to Intruder in the Dust (1948). During the 1930s, he worked in Hollywood on film scripts, notably The Blue Lamp, co-written with Raymond Chandler.
William Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949 and the Pulitzer Prize for The Reivers just before his death in July 1962.
