Willian Faulkner :: essays research papers

William Cuthbert Faulkner was born on September 25, 1897, in New Albany, Mississippi, the first of four sons born to Murry and Maud Butler Faulkner. He was named after his great-grandfather, William Clark Faulkner, the Old Colonel, who had been killed eight years earlier in a duel with his former business partner in the streets of Ripley, Mississippi. A lawyer, politician, planter, businessman, Civil warfare colonel, railroad financier, and finally a best-selling writer (of the novel The White Rose of Memphis), the Old Colonel, even in death, loomed as a larger-than-life mannikin of personal and professional success for his male descendants. A few days before Williams fifth birthday, the Faulkners moved to Oxford, Mississippi, at the urging of Murrys father, John Wesley Thompson Faulkner. Called the Young Colonel out of homage to his father rather than to actual military service, the younger Falkner had abruptly decided to sell the railroad begun by his father. let down that he wo uld not inherit the railroad, Murry took a series of jobs in Oxford, most of them with the help of his father. The elder Faulkner, meanwhile, founded the First National Bank of Oxford in 1910 with $30,000 in capital. William demo artistic talent at a young age, drawing and writing poetry, but around the sixth grade he began to grow increasingly bored with his studies. His earliest literary efforts were romantic, conscientiously modeled on English poets such as Burns, Thomson, Housman, and Swinburne. While still in his youth, he also made the intimacy of two individuals who would play an important role in his future a childhood sweetheart, Estelle Oldham, and a literary mentor, Phil Stone. Estelle was a popular, vivacious girl in Oxford with an dynamical social life that included dances and parties. Despite her romance with William, she dated other boys, one of whom was Cornell Franklin, an Ole Miss law student who proposed marriage. She lightheartedly accepted, apparently believin g his request unctuous since he was going to Hawaii to establish a law practice. When he sent her an engagement ring several months later, however, her parents thought Franklin would be a exquisitely husband for their daughter, and she found herself unable to escape the circumstances. She and Franklin were married in Oxford on April 18, 1918. Williams other close acquaintance from this period arose from their mutual interest in poetry. When Stone read the young poets work, he immediately recognized Williams talent and set out to give Faulkner encouragement, advice, and models for study.