This week (May 8-14) in literary history – American poet Phillis
Wheatley was born (May 8, 1753); J.M. Barrie was born (May 9, 1860); Ernest
Hemingway and Pauline Pfeiffer were married (May 10, 1927); Final volumes of
Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones were
published (May 10, 1749); William Faulkner’s short story collection, Go Down, Moses was published (May 11,
1942); Poet Nelly Sachs died (May 12, 1970); Daphne Du Maurier was born (May
13, 1907); Alfred Lord Tennyson published Poems
(May 14, 1842); Virginia Woolf published Mrs.
Dalloway (May 14, 1925)
Highlighted story of
the week -
On May 11, 1942, William Faulkner’s greatest collections of
short stories, Go Down, Moses, was
published. The collection included “The Bear,” one of his most famous stories,
which had previously appeared in the Saturday
Evening Post. The seven stories all take place in a fictional county of Mississippi,
and are based on Faulkner’s observations of his own native state.
Faulkner was born on September 25, 1897 in New Albany, Mississippi,
where his father was the business manager of the University of Mississippi. His
mother, a sensitive, literary woman, encouraged Faulkner and his three brothers
to read. Faulkner was a good student but lost interest in studies during high
school. He dropped out sophomore year and took a series of odd jobs while
writing poetry. In 1918, his high school girlfriend, Estelle Oldham, married
another man, and Faulkner left Mississippi. He allegedly joined the British
Royal Flying Corps, but World War I ended before he finished his training in
Canada. He returned to Mississippi and continued writing poetry. A neighbor
funded the publication of his first book of poems, The Marble Faun (1924). His first novel, Soldiers’ Pay, was published two years later.
In 1929, he finally married Estelle, who had divorced her
first husband and now had two children. They bought a ruined mansion near
Oxford, Mississippi and began restoring it while Faulkner finished The Sound and the Fury, which was published
in October 1929. His next book, As I Lay
Dying (1930), featured 59 different interior monologues. Light in August (1932) and Absalom, Absalom (1936) also challenged
traditional forms of fiction. Faulkner’s difficult novels did not earn him
enough money to support his family, so he supplemented his income by selling
short stories to magazines and working as a Hollywood screenwriter. He wrote
two critically acclaimed films, both starring Humphrey Bogart: To Have and Have Not was based on an
Ernest Hemingway novel, and The Big Sleep
was based on a mystery by Raymond Chandler.
Faulkner’s reputation received a significant boost with the
publication of The Portable Faulkner
(1946), which included his many stories set in Yoknapatawpha County. Three
years later, in 1949, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature. His Collected Stories (1950) won the
National Book Award. Throughout the rest of his life, he lectured frequently on
university campuses. He died on July 6, 1962 of a heart attack at age 55 and
was buried at St. Peter’s Cemetery in Oxford, Mississippi.
Check back every
Friday for a new installment of “This Week in Literary History.”
Michael Thomas Barry is the author of six nonfiction books
that includes the award winning Literary
Legends of the British Isles and America’s
Literary Legends. Visit Michael’s website www.michaelthomasbarry.com for
more information. His books can be purchased from Amazon through the following
links:
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