William Faulkner Timeline

In 1922, Faulkner's poem "Portrait" was published in the New Orleans literary magazine The Double Dealer, an early milestone in his developing literary career. He once stated that he modeled his early writing on the Romantic era in late 18th- and early 19th-century England.

Faulkner wrote two volumes of poetry published in small printings, the first being The Marble Faun in 1924. This early work preceded his turn to fiction, which he did not pursue with his first novel until 1925.

Faulkner spent the first half of 1925 in New Orleans, Louisiana, living in the French Quarter beginning in March, where many bohemian artists and writers lived. He moved to New Orleans, where he wrote his first novel, Soldiers' Pay (1925), marking his emergence as a novelist.

During the summer of 1927, Faulkner wrote his first novel set in his fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Flags in the Dust. The manuscript was rejected, devastating Faulkner, but he eventually allowed his literary agent Ben Wasson to edit the text, and the novel was published in 1929 as Sartoris.

Sartoris (1927), Faulkner's first work set in Yoknapatawpha County, was published in 1929 after Ben Wasson cut almost a fourth of the original manuscript to meet the demands of publishers Harcourt, Brace. A new edition, published in 1973, restored Faulkner's original title, Flags in the Dust.

In autumn 1928, just after his 31st birthday, Faulkner began working on The Sound and the Fury. The novel was published in 1929 and became one of his most celebrated works, cementing his reputation as a major modernist writer.

Image source: The Sound and the Fury

Faulkner began writing As I Lay Dying in 1929 while working night shifts at the University of Mississippi Power House. The novel was published in 1930 and became one of his most acclaimed works.

Image source: As I Lay Dying

Faulkner's first short story collection, These 13 (1931), includes many of his most acclaimed and most frequently anthologized stories, including "A Rose for Emily", "Red Leaves", "That Evening Sun", and "Dry September".

Light in August (1932) was among Faulkner's celebrated novels produced during his most prolific period, alongside The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930), and Absalom, Absalom! (1936).

By 1932, Faulkner was in dire need of money and had no idea how to get it, so he went to Hollywood, arriving in Culver City, California, in May 1932. From 1932 to 1954, he worked on around 50 films, often hired as much to enhance the prestige of the writers who hired him as for his writing prowess.

In 1933, Faulkner published his second volume of poetry, A Green Bough, in a small printing. It followed his 1924 collection The Marble Faun.

Absalom, Absalom! (1936) was one of Faulkner's celebrated novels, part of his prodigious output that established him as one of the most influential and important writers of the 20th century.

In early 1944, Faulkner wrote a screenplay adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's novel To Have and Have Not, one of his notable Hollywood screenwriting projects during his years working in the film industry.

In an interview with The Paris Review in 1956, Faulkner remarked: "Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique." That same year, he also argued against school segregation in Harper's Magazine.

Faulkner served as the first Writer-in-Residence at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville from February to June 1957, and again in 1958, sharing his craft with students during his later years.

In 1961, Faulkner began writing his nineteenth and final novel, The Reivers. In summer 1961, he finished the first draft of what would be his last completed novel.

Faulkner's reputation grew following the publication of Malcolm Cowley's The Portable Faulkner (1946). By the time of its publication, most of his novels had been out of print, and the anthology revived critical and popular interest in his work.

Faulkner was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature for "his powerful and unique contribution to the modern American novel". He is the only Mississippi-born Nobel laureate, and the prize was awarded at the following year's banquet along with the 1950 Prize to Bertrand Russell.

When Faulkner visited Stockholm in December 1950 to receive the Nobel Prize, he met Else Jonsson (1912–1996), widow of journalist Thorsten Jonsson, who had interviewed Faulkner in 1946 and introduced his works to Swedish readers. At the banquet, publisher Tor Bonnier introduced Else as the widow of the man responsible for Faulkner winning the Nobel Prize. Faulkner and Else had an affair that lasted until the end of 1953.

Faulkner won the National Book Award twice, first for Collected Stories in 1951, and again for A Fable in 1955.

In 1951, Faulkner received the Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur medal from the government of France, reflecting his enduring popularity and esteem in France.

In 1943, amid a creative slowdown, Faulkner had begun work on a novel merging World War I's Unknown Soldier with the Passion of Christ. Published over a decade later as A Fable (1954), it won the 1954 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, one of two of his works to win the prize.

In 1966, the United States Military Academy dedicated a William Faulkner Room in its library, honoring the legacy of the Nobel laureate.

Faulkner's final work, The Reivers, was adapted into a 1969 film starring Steve McQueen, bringing his last novel to the screen.

Starting in 1981, the William Faulkner Foundation's spirit lived on through the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, founded by, among others, Mary Lee Settle as an alternative to the National Book Award.

The United States Postal Service issued a 22-cent postage stamp in Faulkner's honor on August 3, 1987, commemorating the celebrated writer.

The university achieved a major collection of Faulkner materials due to a generous donation by Louis Daniel Brodsky, a collector of Faulkner materials, in 1989.

Faulkner remains especially popular in France, where a 2009 poll found him the second most popular writer, after only Marcel Proust. French philosopher Albert Camus had written that Faulkner successfully imported classical tragedy into the 20th century.

On October 10, 2019, a Mississippi Writers Trail historical marker was installed at Rowan Oak in Oxford, Mississippi, honoring the contributions of William Faulkner to the American literary landscape.