William Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi, as the oldest of four sons of Murray Charles Falkner and Maud Falkner. While he was still a child, the family settled in Oxford in north Mississippi. Falkner lived most of his life in the town. About the age of 13, he began to write poetry. At the Oxford High School he played quarterback on football team and suffered a broken nose. Before graduating he dropped out of school and went to work.
After being rejected from the army because he was too short, Faulkner enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force and had basic training in Toronto. He added the "u" to his name at this time to make it look foreign. He served with the RAF in World War I but did not see any action. This did not stop him later telling that he was shot down in France. After the war he studied literature at the University of Mississippi for a short time. In 1920 Faulkner left the university without taking a degree and moved to New York City, working as a clerk in a bookstore. Then he returned to Oxford where he supported himself as a postmaster at the University of Mississippi. Faulkner was fired for reading on the job. He drifted to New Orleans, where Sherwood Anderson encouraged him to write fiction rather than poetry.
In 1929 Faulkner wrote Sartoris, the first of fifteen novels set in Yoknapatawpha County, a fictional region of Mississippi. Sartoris was later reissued entitled Flags in the Dust (1973). The Yoknapatawpha novels spanned the decades of economic decline from the American Civil War through the Depression. Racism, class division, family as both life force and curse, are the recurring themes along with recurring characters and places. Faulkner used various writing styles. The narrative varies from the traditional storytelling to series of snapshots or collage. Absalom Absalom! is generally considered Faulkner's masterpiece. It uses a range of voices, all trying to unravel the mysteries of a character’s violent life.
In 1929 Faulkner married Estelle Oldham Franklin, his childhood sweetheart, who had divorced. Next year he purchased the traditional Southern pillared house in Oxford, which he named Rowan Oak. With The Sound and the Fury (1929), his first masterwork, Faulkner gained recognition as a writer. While working at an electrical power station, he wrote As I Lay Dying (1930). To earn money Faulker worked over the next 20 years in Hollywood on several screenplays. His own stories were for the daring producers since they dealt with rape, incest, suicide etc. Faulkner's second period of success started in 1946 with the publication of The Portable Faulkner, which rescued him from near-oblivion. However, hard drinking seriously weakened Faulkner’s physique, and besides his own problems his wife's drug addiction and declining health shadowed his life. On June 17, 1962, he was thrown from a horse, and a few weeks later, on July 6, Faulkner died of a concusion. His obituary cited his critics and stated "Mr. Faulkner's writings showed an obsession with murder, rape, incest, suicide, greed and general depravity that did not exist anywhere but in the author's mind".
