William Faulkner A Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, William Faulkner was an influential American writer who gained critical acclaim for his plays, short stories, screenplays, and novels. Faulkner gained fame in 1949 when he won the Nobel Prize in literature and has since been known as one of the most important writers of the 20th century. With his challenging prose, structurally complex works, and impressive writing skills, Faulkner is one of the great American writers. On September 25th, 1897 in New Albany, Mississippi, William Cuthbert Falkner was the first of four sons born to Murry Cuthbert Falkner and Maud Butler. His family would then move 30 miles southwest to the town of Oxford in 1902. Faulkner was greatly influenced by southern American culture and frequently wrote about Mississippi life and people. In 1919, he enrolled in the University of Mississippi, but dropped out a year later with …show more content…
In 1929, he published his fourth novel, The Sound and the Fury, which did not garner much success during its initial release but became popular in 1931 through Faulkner’s sixth novel, Sanctuary. Since then, The Sound and the Fury became a smash hit with critics and mainstream audiences even ranking sixth on the Modern Library’s “100 Best English-Language Novels of the 20th Century.” Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949 for his “unique contribution to the American novel” and in 1955, he won The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his novel A Fable (1954). He was awarded the Prize again in 1963, albeit posthumously, for his final published novel, The Reivers. William Faulkner had an illustrious writing career until his death in July of 1962; his critical and mainstream popularity does not properly match his intellectual greatness. However, along with his literary success came problems in his personal