Sartoris in the context of Oxford, Mississippi

William Cuthbert Faulkner (/ˈfɔːknər/; September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer. He is best known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, a stand-in for Lafayette County where he spent most of his life. A Nobel laureate, Faulkner is one of the most celebrated writers of American literature, often considered the greatest writer of Southern literature and regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the 20th century.

Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi, and raised in Oxford, Mississippi. During World War I, he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force, but did not serve in combat. Returning to Oxford, he attended the University of Mississippi for three semesters before dropping out. He moved to New Orleans, where he wrote his first novel Soldiers' Pay (1925). He went back to Oxford and wrote Sartoris (1927), his first work set in Yoknapatawpha County. In 1929, he published The Sound and the Fury. The following year, he wrote As I Lay Dying. Later that decade, he wrote Light in August; Absalom, Absalom!; and The Wild Palms. He also worked as a screenwriter, contributing to Howard Hawks's To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep, adapted from Raymond Chandler's novel. The former film, adapted from Ernest Hemingway's novel, is the only film with contributions by two Nobel laureates.

William Faulkner (1897–1962) was an American writer known for his Southern Gothic novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on his hometown of Oxford in Lafayette County, Mississippi. He is widely considered the preeminent writer of Southern literature and among the most significant figures in American literature. In 1949, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for "his powerful and artistically unique contribution to the modern American novel".

In 1919, as a student at the University of Mississippi, Faulkner published his first work, the poem "L'Après-midi d'un Faune", in The New Republic. While living in New Orleans in 1925, he published over a dozen short stories collectively known as the "New Orleans Sketches". Faulkner's first novels—Soldiers' Pay (1926) and Mosquitoes (1927)—were not successful, and his third, Flags in the Dust, was rejected by publishers before its publication as the abridged Sartoris (1929). Convinced that he "would never be published again", Faulkner wrote the experimental and deeply personal The Sound and the Fury. Written in stream of consciousness, the novel was published in 1929 with few sales due to the onset of the Great Depression. It is now considered among his greatest works.