William Faulkner Collection
Dates
- Creation: 1824-2006
Creator
- Faulkner, William, 1897-1962 (Person)
Language of Materials
Materials primarily in English, with some publications in French and German.
Conditions Governing Access
This collection is open for research use with the following exceptions: Material pertaining to individual student records may be restricted in accordance with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). Please contact the Archives with specific questions regarding access to such records.
We are currently organizing and describing this collection—which spans 180 different catalog records—to create a single William Faulkner Collection (MSS 16807) and finding aid that will improve access and discoverability. Due to the very large size and complexity of this collection, we are enacting partial, rolling closures while processing to facilitate and expedite this work. We expect to complete the project in late 2026.
Conditions Governing Use
This collection contains some in-copyright material. Visit our Permissions and Publishing page for more information about use of Special Collections materials. The library can provide copyright information upon request, but users are responsible for making their own determination about lawful use of collections materials.
Permissions and Publishing Page:
https://www.library.virginia.edu/special-collections/services/publishing
Please note that W.W. Norton holds copyright to all of Faulkner’s published works.
If you would like to publish images in print or online of original manuscript materials from our collection that pertain to these published works, including holograph drafts and typescripts, please contact:
Penguin Random House LLC
Random House Publishing Group
1745 Broadway
New York, NY 10019
Attention: Permissions Department
Phone: 212-782-9000
For permission to quote from or publish images in print or online of any of Faulkner’s unpublished works or correspondence, please contact:
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Attention: Permissions Department
500 5th Avenue
New York, NY 10110
Phone: 212-354-5500
Email: permissions@wwnorton.com
For permission to use copyrighted Faulkner materials in any way than listed above, please contact:
Faulkner Literary Rights, LLC
P.O. Box 1408
Charlottesville, VA 22902
Phone: 434-296-2156
Photocopies of correspondence between Andrew Brown and T.F. Hickerson regarding “William Faulkner: Man of Legends” came from original copies housed at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and are not to be quoted in print without their permission.
Biographical / Historical
The William Faulkner collection, MSS 16807, centers on the life and work of William Faulkner, a renowned American author and a foundational voice in Southern Gothic literature. William Faulkner was born on September 15, 1897, in New Albany, Mississippi, to Murry Falkner and Maud Butler Falkner. Faulkner was primarily raised in Oxford, Mississippi. He left high school shortly after the eleventh grade in 1915 to work at his grandfather’s bank. William Faulkner would go on to briefly join the Canadian Royal Air Force from 1918-1919 before coming back to Oxford, Mississippi and holding various jobs throughout Mississippi and New York until he published his first book, Soldier’s Pay, in 1926. He married Lida Estelle Oldham in 1929, and together they had one daughter to survive past infancy, Jill Faulkner, in 1933. Faulkner grew in popularity as an author after the publication of The Sound and the Fury in 1929. Though a Mississippi native, William Faulkner moved to Charlottesville, VA, in 1957 to be closer to Jill, her husband, Paul Summers, and their children. It was during this time that Faulkner began work as the University of Virginia’s first ever writer-in-residence. Faulkner continued to teach at the University of Virginia in several different positions until his death on July 6, 1962.
Source: Materials within the collection.
Full Extent
115 Cubic Feet
Metadata Rights Declarations
- License: This record is made available under an Universal 1.0 Public Domain Dedication Creative Commons license. The Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library of the University of Virginia makes its bibliographic records and the metadata contained therein available for public use under the CC0 1.0 Public Domain Designation.
Content Warning
This material may contain offensive or harmful language or imagery. The purpose of this note is to give users the opportunity to decide whether they need or want to view these materials, or at least, to mentally or emotionally prepare themselves to view the materials.
Processing Information
This collection is currently being reprocessed. We are organizing and describing this collection—which spans 180 different catalog records—to create a single William Faulkner Collection (MSS 16807) and finding aid that will improve access and discoverability. Additional collection material not yet listed in this guide can be found by searching the library catalog (Virgo) and the Archival Resources of the Virginias (ARVAS) website.
The William Faulkner collection has historically been represented by numerous different manuscript numbers (collection identifiers). MSS 16807 is a new manuscript number which serves to identify the collection as a whole. Original manuscript numbers have been retained in this guide and are noted in the title of each item.
In this example, the original manuscript number is 6074, and "Series IA, Item 9b" refers to the item's original location within MSS 6074, prior to reprocessing.
Absalom, Absalom! - Typescript (17 Leaves) - 6074, Series IA, Item 9b, 1936
Genre / Form
Style / Period
Topical
- Title
- William Faulkner Collection
- Status
- In Progress
- Author
- Elizabeth Nosari, Kaylin Preslar
- Date
- August 18, 2025
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
Repository Details
Part of the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library Repository
Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library
P.O. Box 400110
University of Virginia
Charlottesville Virginia 22904-4110 United States