Collected Stories of William Faulkner

“I’m a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry first, finds he can’t and then tries the short story which is the most demanding form after poetry. And failing that, only then does he take up novel writing.” —William Faulkner
 
Winner of the National Book Award

Forty-two stories make up this magisterial collection by the writer who stands at the pinnacle of modern American fiction. Compressing an epic expanse of vision into hard and wounding narratives, Faulkner’s stories evoke the intimate textures of place, the deep strata of history and legend, and all the fear, brutality, and tenderness of the human condition. These tales are set not only in Yoknapatawpha County, but in Beverly Hills and in France during World War I. They are populated by such characters as the Faulknerian archetypes Flem Snopes and Quentin Compson, as well as by ordinary men and women who emerge so sharply and indelibly in these pages that they dwarf the protagonists of most novels.

I. THE COUNTRY
Barn Burning
Shingles for the Lord
The Tall Men
A Bear Hunt
Two Soldiers
Shall Not Perish

II. THE VILLAGE
A Rose for Emily
Hair
Centaur in Brass
Dry September
Death Drag
Elly
Uncle Willy
Mule in the Yard
That Will Be Fine
That Evening Sun

III. THE WILDERNESS  
Red Leaves
A Justice
A Courtship
Lo!
 
IV. THE WASTELAND
Ad Astra
Victory
Crevasse
Turnabout
All the Dead Pilots
 
V. THE MIDDLE GROUND
Wash
Honor
Dr. Martino
Fox Hunt  
Pennsylvania Station
Artist at Home
The Brooch
My Grandmother Millard
Golden Land
There Was a Queen
Mountain Victory
 
VI. BEYOND
Beyond
Black Music
The Leg
Mistral
Divorce in Naples
Carcassonne“No man ever put more of his heart and soul into the written word than did William Faulkner. If you want to know all you can about that heart and soul, the fiction where he put it is still right there.” —Eudora Welty
 
“For all his concern with the South, Faulkner was actually seeking out the nature of man. Thus we must turn to him for that continuity of moral purpose which made for greatness of our classics.” —Ralph EllisonWilliam Cuthbert Faulkner was born in 1897 and raised in Oxford, Mississippi, where he spent most of his life. One of the towering figures of American literature, he is the author of The Sound and the Fury, Absalom, Absalom!, and As I Lay Dying, among many other remarkable books. Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1950 and France’s Legion of Honor in 1951. He died in 1962.