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The Portable Faulkner

Author William Faulkner

Edited by Malcolm Cowley

Paperback

$25.00 US

Penguin Adult HC/TR | Penguin Classics

5"W x 7.6"H x 1.4"D | 20 oz | 24 per carton

On sale Feb 25, 2003 | 688 Pages | 9780142437285

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“A real contribution to the study of Faulkner’s work.” —Edmund Wilson

A Penguin Classic

In prose of biblical grandeur and feverish intensity, William Faulkner reconstructed the history of the American South as a tragic legend of courage and cruelty, gallantry and greed, futile nobility and obscene crimes. He set this legend in a small, minutely realized parallel universe that he called Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi.

No single volume better conveys the scope of Faulkner’s vision than The Portable Faulkner. The book includes self-contained episodes from the novels The Sound and the Fury, Light in August, and Sanctuary; the stories “The Bear,” “Spotted Horses,” “A Rose for Emily,” and “Old Man,” among others; a map of Yoknapatawpha County and a chronology of the Compson family created by Faulkner especially for this edition; and the complete text of Faulkner’s 1950 address upon receiving the Nobel Prize in literature. Malcolm Cowley’s critical introduction was praised as “splendid” by Faulkner himself.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,800 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

By the Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

William Faulkner, one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, was born in New Albany, Mississippi, on September 25, 1897. He published his first book, The Marble Faun, in 1924, but it is as a literary chronicler of life in the Deep South—particularly in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, the setting for several of his novels—that he is most highly regarded. In such novels as The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Light in August, and Absalom, Absalom! he explored the full range of post–Civil War Southern life, focusing both on the personal histories of his characters and on the moral uncertainties of an increasingly dissolute society. In combining the use of symbolism with a stream-of-consciousness technique, he created a new approach to fiction writing. In 1949 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. William Faulkner died in Byhalia, Mississippi, on July 6, 1962. View titles by William Faulkner

The Portable FaulknerIntroduction by Malcolm Cowley
Books by William Faulkner

1. The Old People
Editor's Note

1820. A Justice
1833. The Courthouse (A Name for the City)
(From Requiem for a Nun)
18 . Red Leaves
1859. Was
(From Go Down, Moses)

2. The Unvanquished
Editor's Note

1864. Raid
(From The Unvanquished)
1869. Wash
1874. An Odor of Verbena
(From The Unvanquised)

3. The Last Wilderness
Editor's Note

1883. The Bear
(From Go Down, Moses)

4. The Peasants
Editor's Note

1908. Spotted Horses
(From The Hamlet)

5. The End of an Order
Editor's Note

1902. That Evening Sun
1918. Ad Astra
1924. A Rose for Emily
1928. Dilsey
(From The Sound and the Fury)

6. Mississippi Flood
Editor's Note

1927. Old Man
(From The Wild Palms)

7. Modern Times
Editor's Note

1928. Death Drag
1929. Uncle Bud and the Three Madams
(From Sanctuary)
1930. Percy Grimm
(From Light in August)
1940. Delta Autumn
(From Go Down, Moses)

8. The Undying Past
Editor's Note

1951. The Jail (Nor Even Yet Quite Relinquish—)
(From Requiem for a Nun)
1699-1945. Appendix: The Compsons
1950. Address upon Receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature

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