William Faulkner

No matter who makes the list of great American novels, William Faulkner's works always show up on them. He is widely considered one of the greatest of American writers-despite not finishing high school or college, teetering near poverty all his life, working through the Great Depression, battling alcoholism, and raising a family.

Born in 1897, his family moved to Oxford, Mississippi when he was five, a town he would spend most of his life in. While he early on showed a talent for poetry and writing, he grew bored with school and left it for the Winchester Repeating Arms Company in New Haven. That lasted only a short time before he signed up for the Canadian Royal Air Force-lying on his application to get in after being rejected by the U.S. Army Air Force for being too short.

After the war ended, he returned to Mississippi and spent three semesters at the University of Mississippi, despite not having finished high school. It was here that he began publishing poetry, short stories, and a one-act play. For many years, Faulkner moved about the country, struggling with a drinking problem and trying to make a living as a writer. In 1926, his first novel was published.

This start was somewhat rocky, though, and it was only when Faulkner believed his career as a writer was over did things start to change. Purely for personal pleasure, he wrote the novel that would become The Sound and the Fury, one of his strongest and best-known novels.

From here, Faulkner's literary career took an upswing-as did his personal life. He was able to marry his childhood sweetheart after she escaped from a marriage she'd never wanted to be in. Together they bought a house in Oxford where they would live out the rest of their lives.

In addition to his novel writing, Faulkner began screenwriting, making frequent trips back and forth to Hollywood writing screenplays for his novels and others-including adaptations of novels by Raymond Chandler and Ernest Hemingway. While in Hollywood he had a string of affairs and grew increasingly estranged from his drug-addicted wife.

In 1950, Faulkner would receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, sharing it with Bertrand Russell. Shortly after that, he would receive such awards as a French Legion of Honor and a U.S. National Book Award. The Nobel Prize also made him a public figure and he began going on goodwill tours throughout the world at the behest of the U.S. State Department.

Faulkner died at age 64 in 1962 a few weeks after being thrown from a horse.

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--B. Redman