William Faulkner Timeline

Sept. 25, 1897: Born as William Cuthbert Faulkner to Maud Butler and Murry Faulkner in New Albany, Mississippi.

Sept. 22, 1902: Family moves to Oxford, Mississippi.

1905: Attends Grade 1 at Oxford Grade School.

1906: Too smart for Grade 2 so he skips to Grade 3. It is here he is asked what he wants to be and he says he wants to be a great writer like his granddad, William Clark Falkner.

1908: Witnesses the lynching of a black man, Nelse Patton, who was shot dead, then castrated, beheaded, and finally hung naked by the feet from a tree.

1911: Hangs out with his girlfriend Estelle Oldham at Chilton's, a drugstore and ice-cream parlor.

Summer 1914: Begins to read Ezra Pound, Yeats, and T.S. Eliot.

1916: Drops out of highschool and becomes a bank bookkeeper.

April 18, 1918: His boyhood girlfriend, Estelle Oldham, marries Cornell Franklin.

July 9, 1918: After being turned down by the U.S. Army Air Corps to be a pilot because he's just too short, he then pretends to be an Englishman and is accepted by the Canadian Royal Air Force as a cadet.

Dec. 1918: Canadian Royal Air Force discharges him and even though he never sees actual air combat, he has numerous stories to tell.

1919: His poem L'Apres-Midi d'un Faune is published in The New Republic.

Sept. 1919: Attends the University of Mississippi and during this time publishes poems in the Oxford Eagle and The Mississippian.

1921: Becomes a postmaster at the Ole Miss, the postoffice for University of Mississippi.

1922: Becomes a scoutmaster for the Oxford Boy Scouts.

1924: Fired by the Oxford Boy Scouts for his overindulgence with alcohol. He loses his three-year job as postmaster after a postal inspector acuses him of horrible conduct,---ignoring a potential customer, delaying mail from going on the train, and even purposely losing mail. Other charges were playing bridge and Mah Jong with pals. He didn't deny these charges and resigns.

1925: After exploring Switzerland and Italy, he falls in love with Paris and settles there, where his passion for writing is born.

Feb. 25, 1926: Publishes first novel Soldier's Pay.

June 20, 1929: Marries Estelle Oldham (who divorced Cornell Franklin earlier in the year) in College Hill, Mississippi. During their honeymoon in Pascagoula she attempts to drown herself, unable, at the time, to handle the new lifestyle.

Oct. 6, 1930: Publishes As I lay Dying.

Late 1930: Purchases house and lots of land, naming it Rowan Oak.

Jan. 11, 1931: Daughter Alabama is born.

Jan. 20, 1931: Daughter Alabama dies.

Aug. 7, 1932: His dad Murry Falkner dies.

Aug. 6, 1932: Publishes Light in August.

Feb.2, 1933: Begins taking flying lessons.

June 24, 1933: Daughter Jill is born.

Mar. 25, 1935: Publishes Pylan.

Nov. 10, 1935: His youngest brother Dean dies after a plane he had bought for him crashes.

Dec. 10, 1935: Begins his five-week assignment at Twentieth Century-Fox. It is here he meets Meta Dougherty Carpenter and they begin a fifteen-year love affair.

Oct. 26 1936: Publishes Absalom, Absalom!.

Mid Oct., 1937: During a three week trip in New York he goes on a drinking spree that leads to a serious back burn.

Feb. 15, 1938: Publishes The Unvanquished.

Jan. 19, 1939: Publishes The WIld Palms.

Apr. 1, 1940: Publishes The Hamlet.

May 11, 1942: Publishes Go Down, Moses.

1946: The Portable Faulker is published leading to his book sales increasing.

Sept. 27, 1948: Publishes Intruders in the Dust.

Nov.27, 1949: Publishes Knight's Gambit.

Aug.2, 1950: Publishes Collected Stories.

Nov. 8, 1950: Finds out he has won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Dec. 8, 1950: He and his daughter Jill go to Stockholm, Sweden to receive his Nobel Prize.

Sept. 27, 1951: Publishes Requiem for a Nun.

Oct. 26, 1951: In New Orleans he is given the French Legion of Honor.

Aug. 2, 1954: Publishes A Fable.

May 1955: A Fable wins him the Pulizer Prize.

Oct. 14, 1955: Publishes Big Woods.

Apr. 15, 1956: Grandson Paul D. Summers III is born.

Mid 1956: Is challenged by African-American scholar W.E.B. Dubois to a debate on segregation. Faulkner doesn't take the bait and declines.

May 1, 1957: Publishes The Town.

Dec. 2, 1958: Grandson William Cuthbert Falkner Summers is born.

1959: Requiem for a Nun debuts on Broadway.

Mar. 14, 1959: In Charlottesville, falls from a horse and fractures his right collarbone.

Nov. 13, 1959: Publishes The Mansion.

Oct. 16, 1960: At age 88, his mother Maud Butler Falkner dies.

May 30, 1961: Grandson A. Burks Summers is born.

Jan. 3, 1962: Charolottesville revisited, he yet again falls from a horse and gets injured.

June 4, 1961: Publishes his final novel, The Reivers.

June 17, 1961: Falls from a horse again.

July 5, 1961: Admitted to Wright's Sanatorium in Byhalia, Mississippi.

July 6, 1962: Dies of a heart attack at 1:30 a.m.

July 7, 1962: Buried in St. Peter's Cemetery in Oxford.