The Unvanquished

William Faulkner

William Faulkner (September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) 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 Prize laureate, Faulkner is one of the most celebrated writers of American literature and is widely considered the greatest writer of Southern literature. Born in New Albany, Mississippi, Faulkner's family moved to Oxford, Mississippi when he was a young child. With the outbreak of World War I, he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force but he did not serve in combat. Returning to Oxford, he attended the University of Mississippi for three semesters before dropping out. He then moved to New Orleans, where he wrote his first novel Soldiers' Pay (1925). Returning to Oxford, he wrote Sartoris (1927), his first work which is set in Yoknapatawpha County. In 1929, he published The Sound and the Fury. The following year, he wrote As I Lay Dying. Seeking greater economic success, he went to Hollywood to work as a screenwriter.