William Cuthbert Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi on September 25th, 1962. In his early teens, Faulkner became a high school drop out and was forced to work with his grandfather at a bank because of family finances. In 1925 Faulkner moved to New Orleans and worked as a journalist. There he met Sherwood Andersen, a famous short-story writer who convinced him that if he wrote about the people and places he could identify with, it would improve his career as a writer. After a trip to Europe, Faulkner began to write about the fictitious Yoknapatawpha County, which was a representative of Lafayette County, Mississippi (Minter 36). It was there that he lived most of his life and wrote about the people he knew. In the writings of William Faulkner, the reader may sense that the author has created an entire world that simply reflects his own personal experience.
Often, novels and stories set in Yoknapatawpha County were based on Faulkner’s ancestors, African Americans and poor whites during the post-Civil War period. Faulkner’s stories focused on the Southeastern United States at a time period when old traditions began to clash with new ideals. This is an era in American history with which most people can quickly identify, whether they are from the south or not. (Millgate 29). At some point during this period of writing, around 1930, William Faulkner wrote the novel As I Lay Dying and the short story “A Rose for Emily”; the setting for both works, of course, was Yoknapatawpha County.
Most of Faulkner’s novels and a many of his short stories are about the people living in this fictional county. The main town in the county is a small town called Jefferson. "Yoknapatawpha County covers an area of 2,400 square acres and contains, according to Faulkner's count, 6,298 whites and 9,313 Negroes"(Volpe 15). In Faulkner's work, regarding the people of this county, he actually identifies around six hundred of them by name. Faulkner uses character and character...