William Faulkner
Childhood and heritage

Falkner was born on September 25, 1897, in New Albany, Mississippi, the first of four sons of Murry Cuthbert Falkner and Maud Butler. His family was upper middle-class, but "not quite of the old feudal cotton aristocracy ". After Maud rejected Murry's plan to become a rancher in Texas, the family moved to Oxford, Mississippi in 1902, where Faulkner's father established a livery stable and hardware store before becoming the University of Mississippi 's business manager. Except for short periods elsewhere, Faulkner lived in Oxford for the rest of his life.

Faulkner spent his boyhood listening to stories told to him by his elders — stories that spanned the Civil War, slavery, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Faulkner family. Young William was greatly influenced by the history of his family and the region in which he lived. Mississippi marked his sense of humor, his sense of the tragic position of " black and white " Americans, his characterization of Southern characters, and his timeless themes, including fiercely intelligent people who are dwelling behind the façades of good ol' boys and simpletons. He was particularly influenced by stories of his great-grandfather William Clark Falkner, who had become a near legendary figure in North Mississippi. Born into poverty, the elder Falkner was a strict disciplinarian and was a Confederate colonel. Tried and acquitted twice on charges of murder, he became a member of the Mississippi House and became a part-owner of a railroad before being murdered by his co-owner. Faulkner incorporated many aspects of his great-grandfather's biography into his later works.

Faulkner initially excelled in school and skipped the second grade. However, beginning somewhere in the fourth and fifth grades, he became a quieter and more withdrawn child. He occasionally played truant and became indifferent about schoolwork. Instead, he took an interest in studying the history of Mississippi. The decline of his performance in school continued, and Faulkner wound up repeating the eleventh and twelfth grades, never graduating from high school. As a teenager in Oxford, Faulkner dated Estelle Oldham (1897–1972), the popular daughter of Major Lemuel and Lida Oldham, and he also believed he would marry her. However, Estelle dated other boys during their romance, and, in 1918, Cornell Franklin (five years Faulkner's senior) proposed marriage to her before Faulkner did. She accepted.
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