William faulkner+biography

William Cuthbert Falkner was born on September 25, 1897, in New Albany, Mississippi, to Murry Cuthbert Falkner, a railroad worker, and Maud Butler, a housewife. William was raised in Oxford, Mississippi, and, in 1915, left high school to work as a bookkeeper.

Longing for adventure, he joined the Canadian Royal Air Force in 1918 by changing the spelling of his name to the British-sounding Faulkner.

William faulkner+biography

Faulkner entered the University of Mississippi in 1919 but withdrew in 1920. He then held various jobs in New York and Mississippi until 1924.

Faulkner’s first published novel, Soldier’s Pay (1926), drew on his experiences in World War I (1914–1918), while Mosquitoes (1927) examined literary life in New Orleans (in 1925, Faulkner lived there with the writer Sherwood Anderson).

Faulkner married Lida Estelle Oldham Franklin on June 20, 1929—she had divorced her husband to marry Faulkner and brought two children of her own to the marriage—and they later had two daughters, Ala