**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 Co...

**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.