William Cuthbert Falkner (he would later change the spelling) was born on 25 September 1897, in New Albany, Mississippi, where his father Murry was working for the railroad that William's namesake and great grandfather, the “Old Colonel” had helped found. The family soon moved to nearby Ripley and then four years later to Oxford, where Faulkner would spend most of his life. Although small and isolated, the town was the site of the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss), where the rather ordinary, hard-drinking Murry eventually became business manager. Young William unsurprisingly looked back to Colonel William Clark Falkner for a role model; this ancestor, a Civil War hero, had also been a popular writer, a local political …
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Citation: Lowe, John, Stephen E. Meats. "William Faulkner". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 19 July 2001; last revised 28 October 2022. [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4923, accessed 24 November 2024.]
