For Love of Books: William Faulkner

The cream of the crop of my collection, as it sits on a shelf in the dining room.

“”When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old manservant – a combined gardener and cook – had seen in at least ten years.”  –  “A Rose for Emily”

I can blame the Tolkien obsession on my brothers.  But my Faulkner obsession has the blame laid squarely on Carol Mooney, my high school English teacher (both for Freshman and AP).  In AP English we read The Sound and the Fury and I was hooked for life.  And as for the collection, you can actually blame that on Veronica.  It was when she bought the Signet copy of Sanctuary because of how awesome the cover was, in spite of the fact that I already had it, that I started opening myself to collecting various editions of books.  Before I met her I owned precisely 1 copy of Lord of the Rings and 1 copy of The Sound and the Fury.

There is a competition going.  Looking in my Book Register (of course I have a spreadsheet that has all this information – read this and stop asking silly questions), the Faulkner collection currently encompasses 314 books for a total of 114273 pages.  The Tolkien collection only has 188 books for 88201 pages.  Of course, Tolkien only wrote two novels while Faulkner wrote 20.  And the Faulkner collection has probably only grown by about a shelf since we came to Boston, whereas the Tolkien collection has probably doubled in size.  Clearly they are the two collecting passions in my life (if by the two, you don’t count Star Wars, the Modern Library, the Viking Portable Library, Harry Potter or Lego).

“I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment not spend all your breath trying to conquer it.  Because no battle is ever won he said.  They are not even fought.  The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.”  –  The Sound and the Fury

The bulk of the Faulkner collection.

And so I began to buy Faulkner books.  And to buy them.  And buy them.  See, at first I was actually stymied by my OCD.  The first Faulkner book I ever owned was the biege Vintage The Sound and the Fury.  And so I wanted a collection that matched.  Faulkner was the first literary author that I started to collect, and by my Sophomore year in college I had six Faulkner novels, having added As I Lay Dying, Sanctuary, Light in August, Pylon and Absalom Absalom (and had read all of them).  But there I got stuck.  Because, if you look at the editions, down at the end of the post, you’ll notice those are the only books printed in that edition.  So I kept putting off getting any other Faulkner books because they didn’t match.  It wasn’t until my Senior year that I started buying some of them in the black mass markets (I remember reading Requiem for a Nun in Heathrow Airport in January of 1996 waiting to board my flight to Vienna and I know which other copies I got first because they are highlighted in my copy of Sanctuary – Flags in the Dust, Intruder in the Dust, The Reivers, The Unvanquished and The Wild Palms).  As it turns out, OCD can be a problem if you want to collect Faulkner.  Prior to 2012, there was never a set released by Random House that contained all of their titles (see the Editions below).  So you either had to mix and match a bit or you had to leave some books out.

The first picture we sent out of Thomas, when he was four days old, and still a favorite. The Faulkner bookcase is in the background.

But, eventually, I started buying other editions and then it all exploded.  After all, I was working at the largest bookstore in the world, with an employee discount.  And all these books kept passing through my hands.  And I started buying all of them.  Then later I did a big buy off EBay of a bunch of Faulkner books – mostly British hardcovers.  In fact, the very first picture of Thomas that was ever sent out (see left) had my Faulkner bookcase in the background.

Eventually my Faulkner collection grew so much that it took over the old wooden bookcase that had been my great-grandmother’s.  Instead of my literature bookcase, that became the Faulkner bookcase.  And after we moved to Boston, it grew so much (you can see copies stacked up on top of it in the video here) that I also had to co-op another small bookcase.  In our previous place, that worked well, as that small bookcase served as a hutch on the desk, filled with all the 1st Editions.  But when we moved in here, we had that glorious shelf built into the dining room wall in the top photo where I could display all the 1st Editions and other nice editions.  So that’s where my collection stands at the moment, still not quite fitting and growing all the time.

Now, have you read Faulkner?  If you haven’t, this can serve as an introductory guide, as I note which books might make good starting points.  Have you read him and have an interest in collecting him?  Well, this will definitely be a good starting point.  As you may have guessed, I consider him the world’s greatest novelist (and with Shakespeare, the greatest writer).  He has a mind-blowing six novels in my Top 100, as I pointed out in the trivia.  Hopefully, even if you don’t grow to love him, you will at least take a stab at reading him.

“Memory believes before knowing remembers.”  –  Light in August

note:  What is listed below are the individual copies I have in my Faulkner collection.  Because so many of these versions are out-of-print, there aren’t links to finding them.  You’ll have to find them on your own if you want them.  Also, some copies re-use ISBNs, so be aware that you might not find the same copy I have.  If you have questions about the various Editions, there are lists by Edition at the end, which describes them.  Also, because I have multiple copies of some editions or some editions may look the same as others, not every book listed may be in the pictures.  I also make various references to the collections people own on LibraryThing.  You can find the Faulkner page here.  You can see my Faulkner collection here.

note 2:  These are the books in my collection.  Not the complete list of all the editions of Faulkner, though I discuss some of those at the end.  So don’t think this is a complete bibliography.  My collection is far from complete and is always growing (and Veronica begins screaming now).

note 3:  On that previous ending, I can point out that both Houghton Mifflin (LOTR) and Random House (Faulkner) have released new versions in the recent time before these posts were done that I don’t have yet because of finances.  Bastard companies.  Do they think I’m made of money?

note 4:  I have done the best I can to identify the actual printing dates for as many of these books as possible, often aided by the Carl Petersen Collection.  But I have not always been successful and so there may be question marks where I am uncertain, or approximate dates.

“’Now I want you to tell me just one thing more.  Why do you hate the South?’  ’I dont hate it,’ Quentin said, quickly, at once, immediately; ‘I dont hate it,’ he said.  I dont hate it he thought, panting in the cold air, the iron New England dark: I dont.  I dont!  I dont hate it!  I dont hate it!“  –  Absalom, Absalom!

The Works:

The Novels:

• 

  Soldiers Pay

  Soldiers’ Pay  (1926)

  • Soldiers’ Pay was Faulkner’s first novel, published by Boni and Liveright.  It was published before he turned 30 and yet it showed much of the path that his writing would take for the next 35 years.  Though it is set in Georgia rather than Mississippi, it still sets the stage for what is to come.  His stream-of-consciousness modernism finds its roots here, yet it hasn’t taken mature form.  I considered adding this to my 101-200 but in the end, decided against it.  It is one of the rarer Faulkner books because it is not licensed to Random House in the United States, so it has never been printed by Vintage in any of their editions (it is currently published in the U.S. by Liveright).  It is actually easier to find in the U.K., where it was licensed to Penguin with all of his works and is now printed by Vintage U.K..
  • Editions:
  

  The covers of Soldiers Pay

  • 1st Penguin Edition  (123)  –  1938
  • Chatto & Windus  –  1957
  • Signet  (P2006)  –  1961  –  5th printing
  • Penguin  (123)  –  1964  –  two copies, of slightly different times because the prices are different (4/6 as opposed to 7)
  • Signet Modern Classic  (CQ411)  –  1968
  • Penguin Modern Classics  –  green  (0140001239)  –  1976
  • Penguin Modern Classics  –  orange trade  (0140001239)  –  1982
  • Liveright trade  (0871400081)  –  ?
  • Vintage  –  British  (0099282828)  –  2000

• 

  Mosquitoes

  Mosquitoes  (1927)

  • This is Faulkner’s second novel, also published by Boni and Liveright, the one that is probably the least read.  I think it’s by far the weakest of his novels and I can’t imagine I’m the only one who thinks it.  It is also the hardest one to find, usually, as it is one of the two that has never been part of the Random House work.  It is designed to be comic and it takes place in New Orleans, both things which mark it as different from nearly all of his other books.  Like Soldiers’ Pay, Mosquitoes has never been printed by Random House (it is also currently published in the U.S. by Liveright).  This makes it probably the least likely Faulkner novel for you to find.
  • Editions:
  • Dell paperback  (S38)  –  1962
  • Chatto & Windus  –  1964
  • Dell Laurel Edition  (5836)  –  1965
• 

  Sartoris

  Sartoris  (1929)

  • This was Faulkner’s third novel and it was a nightmare for him to get published.  It was rejected outright by Liveright (who suggested it should be less experimental).  It was then brought to Harrison Smith, an editor at Harcourt, Brace, who was a friend of Faulkner’s friend Ben Wasson, then acting as his agent.  Smith got Harcourt to agree to publish it with heavy revisions that would be undertaken by Wasson.  In the course of the editing, so much of the book was cut that they ended up changing the title from Flags in the Dust to Sartoris.  Sartoris is a strong book and it shows the direction that Faulkner would go, both stylistically (his modernism is beginning to approach the style of The Sound and the Fury) and because this is the first of the Yoknapatawpha novels, the County that Faulkner would create and spend most of the next three decades populating.  Sartoris might be even harder to find than the first two novels because of circumstances rather than publisher.  The rights to print Sartoris did come to Random House, but when they brought out the original manuscript of Flags in the Dust in 1973, they stopped printing Sartoris and it is currently out-of-print.  Though, that has not stopped it from being more popular at Library Thing than Flags is.
  • Editions:
  • Signet 1st Edition  (S1032)  –  1953
  • Random House  –  white  (0394443756)  –  1961
  • Signet Classic  (CW696)  –  @1965
  • Signet Classic  (0451514122)  –  @1970
• 

  The Sound and the Fury

  The Sound and the Fury  (1929)

  • This, of course, is my #1 novel of all-time.  It has been ever since I first read at 16 years old for AP English.  For years it dominated my book collection, though it has now been passed by Lord of the Rings for total copies.  Still, don’t think that what is you see is everything.  There are 30 separate copies of the book itself (yes, there are a few duplicates, but those are oddities, not deliberate).  Aside from those 30, there are 2 copies printed with As I Lay Dying.  Then there is the copy that comes in the box set of Summer of Faulkner.  Then there is the copy that is printed in Novels: 1926-1929.  And then, not in the picture, are the 3 copies that I have in my copies of The Faulkner Reader (it is printed in whole in that collection).  That makes 37 complete copies.  Oh, and my VHS copy of the 1959 film.  And there are other editions (mostly British) that I don’t have that you can see here.  In fact, finding that page was what got me into LibraryThing in the first place.  Of course I don’t have the wonderful beautiful Folio Society copy from last year that retailed at $345 (though I have the brochure) and I don’t have a first edition because I don’t have $20,000 handy.  But I do have what I think is a damn impressive collection.
  • Editions:
  

  The Sound and the Fury covers.

  • w /  As I Lay Dying  –  Modern Library  paperback (P6)  –  1954
  • w /  As I Lay Dying  –  Modern Library  (ML 187)  –  1955
  • Signet movie cover  (D1628)  –  1959
  • Modern Library Paperback  (P6)  –  1960
  • Vintage paperback  (V-5)  –  1961
  • Vintage  –  white  (V-5)  –  1963
  • Random House  –  white  (0394446402)  –  1966
  • Modern Library  (ML 187)  –  1967  (2 copies)
  • Modern Library College Editions  –  middle edition  (T94)  –  1967
  • Random House  –  red  –  1970
  • Vintage  –  black  (0394700058)  –  1972
  • Penguin Modern Classics  – green  (014002087x)  –  1975
  • Franklin Library  –  1979
  • Penguin Modern Classics  –  orange  (014002087x) – 1982
  • 1st Reprint  (First Edition Library)  –  1984
  • New Corrected 1st Edition  (Random House, 0394532414)  –  1984
  • Norton Critical 1st Edition  (0393956520)  –  (CT)  –  1987
  • Vintage  –  biege  (0394747747)  –  (CT)  –  1987
  • Modern Library College Editions  –  later edition  (0075536668)  –  1988
  • Vintage  –  gold  (0679732241)  –  (CT)  –  1990  (3 copies)
  • Modern Library  –  gold  (0679600175)  –  (CT)  –  1992
  • Picador  (0330306529)  –  1993
  • Norton Critical 2nd Edition  (0393964817)  –  (CT)  –  1994  (2 copies)
  • Book of the Month Club  –  1997
  • Vintage  –  British  (0099475014)  –  1995
  • Everyman’s Library  (1857150694)  –  2000
  • Vintage  –  gold  –  Summer of Faulkner box  (0307275329)  –  (CT)  –  2005
  • Modern Library  –  new hardcover  (9780679600176)  –  (CT)  –  2012
  • Vintage  –  new  (9780679732242)  –  (CT)  –  2012
  • VHS copy of the 1959 film
• 

  As I Lay Dying

  As I Lay Dying  (1930)

  • As I Lay Dying probably ranks second to The Sound and the Fury in reputation among Faulkner’s books.  It was #35 on the Modern Library list, though it comes in at #19 on my own Top 100 list.  It appears to have gone back in print at the same time as TSATF when they were printed together in the Modern Library, beginning in 1946 after the release of The Portable Faulkner.  They were also printed together in the Modern Library paperback series (both books are listed above under TSATF).  In both cases, TSATF was eventually printed on its own, keeping the catalog number while As I Lay Dying got its own Modern Library number (though it was no longer included in the paperback series).  In fact, between 1933 (the 2nd printing) and 1964 (when it was added to the white Random House hardcovers, a copy I don’t have), this novel was never printed on its own in the U.S..  A couple of years ago it joined TSATF in the Norton Critical Editions series.
  • 

    Probably the second most highly-regarded of Faulkner’s novels is As I Lay Dying.

    Editions

  • Chatto & Windus Uniform Edition  –  1962
  • Vintage  –  white  (V-254)  –  1964
  • Modern Library 1st Edition  –  1967
  • Penguin Modern Classic – green  (0140019405)  –  1970
  • Random House  –  red  –  1970
  • Vintage – black  (0394702549)  –  1972
  • International Collectors Library  –  1978
  • Vintage – beige  (0394747453)  (CT)  –  1987
  • 1st Edition Library  –  @1990
  • Vintage – gold  (067973225x)  –  1990
  • Modern Library – gold  (0375504524)  –  2000
  • Vintage  –  gold  –  Summer of Faulkner box  (0307275329)  –  2005
  • Norton Critical  (9780393931389)  –  2010
  • Vintage  –  new  (9780679732259)  (CT)  –  2012
• 

  Sanctuary

  Sanctuary  (1931)

  • Sanctuary is a dark book, full of menacing evil, brutal depravity and human desperation.  And among all of Faulkner’s novels, outside of The Sound and the Fury, it might be my favorite one to read.  Why is that?  Well, it’s just so readable.  There are great characters and there is a great story and it feels like a combination of the modernistic approach of Faulkner with the hard-boiled detective fiction being established by Dashiell Hammett at exactly the same time.  Yes, there are things in the novel to recoil from, but those can also be the things that make it so compelling.  It ranks #62 in my Top 100.  Sanctuary has a lot of editions (I have 20 copies, which ties it with Light in August for 2nd place) because it was the one book that was always in print (when they say in descriptions of The Portable Faulkner that only one of his books was in print they’re talking about Sanctuary, which, because of its presence in the Modern Library, has never been out of print).  There are two different Signet editions which print it in one volume with its sequel, Requiem for a Nun.  The second one of those combined volumes has a movie cover copy for the 1961 film, which was based on both books.  There was also a 1933 film called The Story of Temple Drake (I have DVDs of both – they’re on the right in the picture).  Sanctuary was heavily edited before it was published (it was actually submitted before As I Lay Dying, but because of the revisions was printed afterwards).  The original version of the text, which had been the subject of a critical study in 1972 (shown on the right, listed in the Reference section below) was printed in its own volume in hardcover in 1981.
  • 

    Sanctuary might be my second favorite of Faulkner’s books, so what does that say about me?

    Editions:

  • 1st Modern Library  –  (ML 61)  –  1932
  • Modern Library  –  1st dust jacket  (ML 61)  –  1933
  • Signet  (632)  –  1949  (9th printing)
  • Modern Library – 2nd dust jacket  (ML 61)  –  1951
  • 1st Penguin Edition  (899)  –  1953
  • w/Requiem  –  Signet 1st joint printing  (S1079)  –  1954
  • w/Requiem  –  Signet movie cover  (T1900)  –  1961
  • Uniform Edition  (Chatto & Windus)  –  1961
  • Random House  –  white  –  1962
  • Modern Library – 3rd dust jacket  (ML61)  –  1967
  • Vintage  –  white  (V-381)  –  1967
  • Signet Modern Classic  (CQ413)  –  1968  (1st printing)
  • Signet Classic  (CY685)  –  1968  (3rd printing)
  • Random House  –  red  –  1970
  • Vintage  –  black  (0394703812)  –  1972
  • Penguin Modern Classics  (0140008993)  –  1980
  • The Original Text 1st Edition  (Random House, 0394512782)  –  1981
  • Vintage  –  biege  (0394747445)  (CT)  –  1987
  • Vintage  –  gold  (0679748148)  (CT)  –  1993
  • Book of the Month Club  –  1997
  • DVD of The Story of Temple Drake  (1933 film)
  • 2 DVDs of 1961 film version (one is screwed up)
• 

  Light in August

  Light in August  (1932)

  • I don’t really need to say much about Light in August.  It has long been established as one of the crown jewels of American Literature  It made my list at #27, though that actually meant it was ranked 4th among Faulkner’s novels.  Because I have the First Edition Library reprint of the 1st Edition, I recognized the dust jacket when Bob Balaban put his book down on the bed in a scene in Gosford Park – it was a nice touch.  It was never printed by Signet and wasn’t added to the Vintage series until the black mass markets, presumably because for so long it was being printed by the Modern Library, either in their original edition, or in the Modern Library College Editions (of which it has at least three different versions).  I have 20 copies, which ties it for 2nd with Sanctuary.
  • 

    Light in August is tied for second in my Faulkner collection for total copies.

    Editions:

  • Modern Library  –  original dj  (ML 88)  –  1956  (2 copies)
  • 1st Penguin Edition  –  (1433)  –  1960
  • Modern Library  –  white dj  (ML 88)  –  1964  (2 copies)
  • Modern Library College Edition – 1st  (T68)  –  1965
  • Random House  –  white  (0394433351)  –  1967
  • Modern Library College Edition  –  2nd  (0394309685)  –  1968
  • Random House  –  red  –  1970
  • Penguin Modern Classics – green  (0140014330)  –  1970
  • Vintage – black  (0394711890)  –  1972
  • Franklin Library  –  1979
  • Penguin Modern Classics – orange  (0140014330)  –  1983
  • Vintage  –  beige  (0394747437)  –  (CT)  –  1987
  • Modern Library College Edition  –  later  (007553648x)  –  1988
  • Vintage  –  gold  (0679732268)  (CT)  –  1990
  • 1st reprint  (First Edition Library)  –  1991
  • Book of the Month Club  –  1997
  • Modern Library – gold  (067964248x)  (CT)  –  2002
  • Vintage  –  gold  –  Summer of Faulkner box  (0307275329)  –  2005
• 

  Pylon

  Pylon  (1935)

  • This is easily one of the least well-known of Faulkner’s books (it ranks second to last among owners at LibraryThing, which I found a bit surprising).  Part of it is that it doesn’t hold up as well as a lot of his books (definitely ranking near the bottom of his novels for me).  Part of it is that it’s not part of the Yoknapatawpha County series (it takes place in New Orleans) and so a lot of readers feel free to skip it.  Part of it is the printing history – it had only been printed by Vintage once before last year, in the 1987 Corrected Text series (biege).  So it hasn’t been readily available.  Yet, I knew none of this for years.  Because it is part of that biege series that were the first 6 Faulkner books I owned, it was one of the first Faulkner books I read.  It was made into a film called The Tarnished Angels in 1958 (with a Signet movie cover version to go along with it).
  • 

    Though Pylon was one of the first Faulkner books I read, it is one of the least known.

    Editions:

  • 1st Edition  (Harrison Smith and Robert Haas, Inc.)  –  1935
  • Signet 1st Edition  (863)  –  1951
  • Chatto & Windus  –  1955
  • Signet movie cover  (The Tarnished Angels)  –  (S1485)  –  1958
  • Random House  –  white  –  1965
  • Modern Library 1st Edition  (ML 380)  –  1967
  • Vintage  –  biege  (0394747410)  –  (CT)  –  1987
• 

  Absalom, Absalom!

  Absalom, Absalom!  (1936)

  • Absalom, Absalom appears in my Top 100 novels at #12.  It had not been included in the Modern Library list, which seemed odd to me at the time, since as you can see, I have it ranked second among Faulkner books.  I have also written about it in grad school because of its use of Quentin Compson as a narrator.  The final line (printed above) is one of the defining lines of Faulkner’s work.  Absalom, Absalom was, like TSATF, printed in hardcover in the 1980’s when the Corrected Text was first printed.  A lot of my copies of this book are sadly in poor shape.  My 1st Edition is missing a dust jacket.  My Modern Library is from 1951 but not a first and is an ex-library with the library stamp covering the number on the spine.  My second gold Vintage book is badly warped.  And I know there is a white Random House version that I don’t have.  Absalom, Absalom was the first Faulkner book to be published after he made Random House his regular publisher (Idyll in the Desert in a small special publication in 1931 was his first book published by Random House).
  • 

    The majestic story of the disintegration of the South – Absalom, Absalom!

    Editions

  • 1st  (Random House)  –  1936
  • Modern Library  –  1st dust jacket  (ML 271)  –  1951
  • Modern Library  –  white dust jacket  (ML 271)  –  1964
  • Modern Library  College Edition  –  2nd  (0394309782)  –  1968
  • Vintage – black  (0394717805)  –  1972
  • Franklin Library  –  1978
  • 1st reprint  (First Edition Library)  –  @1985
  • 1st Edition – Corrected Text  (0394556348)  –  1986
  • Vintage – biege  (0394747755)  –  (CT)  –  1987
  • Modern Library College Edition  –  later  (0075536579)  –  1988
  • Vintage – gold  (0679732187)  –  (CT)  –  1990  (2 copies)
  • Modern Library – gold  (0679600728)  –  (CT)  –  1993
  • Vintage – British  (0099475111)  –  1996
  • Vintage – new  (9780679732181)  –  (CT)  –  2012
• 

  The Unvanquished

  The Unvanquished  (1938)

  • This if the first of the non-novel novels.  Like The Wild Palms and Go Down Moses, it is made up of stories that work together as a coherent whole.  But that also means that some people don’t view it as a novel.  This is a very good place to begin reading Faulkner.  The Signet Classic is an odd edition – it is one of the rare Faulkner books printed by Signet after the early pulp paperbacks and before the Signet Modern Classic series that seems to have begun in 1968.
  • 

    The Unvanquished – another good way to ease yourself into Faulkner

    Editions:

  • Signet 1st Edition  (977)  –  1952
  • Penguin 1st Edition  (1058)  –  1955
  • Chatto & Windus Uniform Edition  –  1960
  • Chatto & Windus  –  1960
  • Signet Classic  (CD9)  –  1962  (5th printing)
  • Penguin orange  (1058)  –  1965
  • Random House  –  white  –  1965
  • Vintage  –  white  (V-351)  –  1966
  • Vintage  –  black  (0394703510)  –  @1975
  • Penguin Modern Classics  –  green  (0140010580)  –  1975
  • Penguin Modern Classics  –  orange trade  (0140010580)  –  1982
  • Vintage  –  gold  (0679736522)  –  1991
• 

  The Wild Palms

  The Wild Palms (If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem)  (1939)

  • This is two books in one, although at times they aren’t even in one.  There are two stories here, The Old Man and The Wild Palms, that are interchanged throughout the book.  They have also been printed separately by Signet.  Starting with the Vintage gold trade edition, the book was given the original title that Faulkner preferred for it.
  • 

    The Wild Palms, or If I Forget Thee Jerusalem or The Wild Palms and Old Man (sold separately).

    Editions:

  • U.S. Penguin 1st Edition  –  only The Wild Palms  (659)  –  1948
  • Signet  –  only The Wild Palms  (659A)  –  2nd printing  –  1948
  • Signet 1st Edition  –  only The Old Man  (692)  –  1948
  • Penguin 1st U.K. Edition  –  orange  (1630)  –  1961
  • Chatto & Windus Uniform Edition  –  1962
  • Vintage  –  Buckram  (V-262)  –  1964
  • Vintage  –  white  (V-262)  –  1964
  • Signet Modern Classic  (CQ414)  –  1968
  • Penguin Modern Classic  –  green  (0140016309)  –  1970
  • Vintage  –  black  (039470262x)  –  1972
  • Penguin Modern Classic  –  orange trade  (0140016309)  –  1982
  • Modern Library  1st Edition  (0394605136)  –  1984
  • Vintage  –  gold  –  published as If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem  (0679741933)  –  1995
• 

  The Hamlet

  The Hamlet  (1940)

  • The Hamlet is the first of the Snopes books.  This is one of Faulkner’s funniest books.  Its conception dates all the way back to 1925 and parts of what would later be published as Father Abraham as well as the short story “Spotted Horses” would be included in the book.  While Faulkner had covered the other end of the social scale in Sartoris, he had been writing about the Snopes family for a while (they might be Faulkner’s most well-known characters thanks to “Barn Burning”, which isn’t included in the book, though some of the actions in the story are alluded to in it) and this was the beginning of their long complete story.  In 1958, the third part of the book “The Long Summer” was made into a film called The Long Hot Summer, with an accompanying Signet edition which only printed the third section of the book.  This was the only book in the Snopes Trilogy to be included in the gold trade Vintage editions.  Also, see Snopes, listed down below.
  • 

    The Hamlet – the start of the Snopes Trilogy.

    Editions:

  • Chatto & Windus  –  1958
  • The Long Hot Summer  –  Signet movie cover  (S1501)  –  1958
  • Modern Library paperback  (P18)  –  1960
  • Vintage  –  white  (V-139)  –  1968
  • Random House  –  white  (0394427599)  –  ?
  • Vintage  –  black  (0394701399)  –  @1975
  • Vintage  –  gold  (0679736530)  –  1991
• 

  Go Down, Moses

  Go Down, Moses and Other Stories  (1942)

  • This is more a novel than it is a collection of stories.  In fact, after the 1st Edition, it would cease to carry the title “and Other Stories” (which makes it easy to identify 1st Editions).  This barely missed the cut for my second top 100 novels and I partially cut it to avoid the argument that it’s not a novel.  But Faulkner considered it a novel and that was why he cut the title.
  • 

    In spite of the first title, Go Down Moses is a novel.

    Editions:

  • 1st Edition library binding  (Random House)  –  1942
  • Chatto & Windus Uniform Edition  –  1960
  • 1st Penguin Edition  –  orange  (1434)  –  1960
  • Modern Library  (ML 187)  –  1966
  • Vintage  –  black  (0394718844)  –  1973
  • Chatto & Windus Collected Edition  (0701106727)  –  1974
  • Penguin Modern Classics  –  green  (0140014349)  –  1977
  • Vintage  –  gold  (0679732179)  –  1990
• 

  Intruder in the Dust

  Intruder in the Dust  (1948)

  • This is the novel widely considered to have helped him to win the Nobel Prize.  It was one of the last books cut for consideration for my second 100 novels.  Like The Old Man and the Sea (which was explicitly mentioned by the Nobel Committee), this is a lesser, thinner work that has the same style and ideas but is easier to approach and seemed to have won the Nobel Committee over.  It was made into a film in 1949, filmed in Faulkner’s hometown of Oxford.  In spite of its popularity and being printed in the Modern Library and Modern Library College Edition, it doesn’t seem to have been printed by Vintage until they went to the black covers in the early 70’s.
  • 

    Intruder in the Dust – the novel that may have helped Faulkner win the Nobel Prize.

    Editions:

  • 2nd printing  (Random House)  –  1948
  • Signet 1st Edition  (743)  –  1949
  • Signet  –  2nd cover  (S1511)  –  1958  –  7th printing
  • Signet  –  3rd cover  (D1848)  –  1960  –  8th printing
  • Chatto & Windus Uniform Edition  –  1962
  • Modern Library  (ML 351)  –  1965
  • Modern Library College Edition  (T88)  –  1967
  • book club edition of the Random House 16th printing  –  1967
  • Penguin Modern Classic  –  green  (0140014322)  –  1970
  • Vintage  –  black  (0394717929)  –  1972
  • Penguin Modern Classic  –  orange trade  (0140014322)  –  1982
  • Vintage  –  gold  (0679736514)  –  1991
  • Vintage  –  new  (9780679736516)  –  2011
• 

  Requiem for a Nun

  Requiem for a Nun  (1951)

  • This novel is an interesting one for a variety of reasons.  The first one is that it is a flat-out sequel.  While Faulkner had been writing inter-connected pieces and re-used certain characters, this was the first time he directly continued a story into another book.  The second is that this book is actually, for the most part, a play, with narratives to begin each act.  Many don’t consider it a novel at all.  The third is that in spite of being much less well known that most of the other novels (at LibraryThing it ranks 16th of the 20 novels in owners) it has what is probably the most universally known Faulkner quote, especially now that it has been quoted in Midnight in Paris (see the end of the post).  It has, at least twice, been published with Sanctuary in a single volume; those books are listed both here and above.  The second time is rather appropriate, as it was for the movie cover Signet printing; the film is adapted from both books though Requiem is not mentioned in the film credits.  My review of the film can be found here.

Faulkner returns to the story of Temple Drake in Requiem for a Nun.

• Editions:
• 1st Edition  (Random House)  –  1951
• w/Sanctuary  –  Signet 1st  (S1079)  –  1954
• Chatto & Windus  –  1957  (3rd impression)
• w/Sanctuary  –  Signet movie cover  (T1900)  –  1961
• Random House  –  white  (0394442741)  –  ?
• Vintage  –  black  (0394714121)  –  1975
• Penguin Modern Classic  –  green  (0140014357)  –  1976
• 

  A Fable

  A Fable  (1954)

  • This novel, worked on at periods from 1944 to 1953, was the Passion story, set in World War I.  It would be the first book to win both the Pulitzer (Faulkner’s first and it makes him the only American author to win the Nobel Prize before winning a Pulitzer) and the National Book Award (it would be the only dual winner until 1965).  It is one of his more inaccessible books.
  • 

    Faulkner won his first Pulitzer Prize for A Fable.

    Editions:

  • 1st Edition  (Random House)  –  1954
  • 1st U.K. Edition  (Chatto & Windus)  –  1955
  • 1st Modern Library  (ML 368)  –  1966
  • Signet Modern Classic 1st Printing  (CY412)  –  1968
  • Vintage  –  black  (0394724135)  –  1978
• 

  The Town

  The Town  (1957)

  • This novel is the second volume in the Snopes Trilogy, picking up from where The Hamlet had left off.   Faulkner had always envisioned the Snopes story as something encompassing a lot more than The Hamlet (in Selected Letters, there is a letter from December of 1938 where he envisions the whole trilogy, though at the time the three books were called The Peasants, Rus in Urbe and Ilium Falling).  Also see Snopes, listed below.
  • 

    Faulkner returned to the story of Snopes 17 years later with The Town.

    Editions:

  • 1st Edition  (Random House)
  • 1st U.K. Edition  (Chatto & Windus)  –  1958
  • Vintage  –  white  (0394701844)  –  @1968
  • Vintage  –  black  (0394701844)  –  1985
• 

  The Mansion

  The Mansion  (1959)

  • This the third and final volume of The Snopes Trilogy, finishing a work that had really begun all the way back in 1925.  The reviews of the book were not that strong, but I think it’s a good and fitting end to the trilogy, which also recaps some of the events from The Town, but with a different viewpoint.  Also, see Snopes, down below.
  • 

    The Mansion – the third in the Snopes Trilogy.

    Editions:

  • 1st Edition  (Random House)  –  1959
  • 1st U.K. Edition  (Chatto & Windus)  –  1961
  • Vintage  –  white  (V-282)  –  1965
  • Vintage  –  black  (0394702824)  –  @1975
• 

  The Reivers

  The Reivers  (1962)

  • This was Faulkner’s final novel, appearing only a month before he would unexpectedly die in July of 1962.  It is, rare for Faulkner, an explicitly comic novel.  Most of Faulkner’s humor is more subtle and he doesn’t usually get a whole lot of of credit for it.  The Reivers would, after Faulkner’s death, win the Pulitzer, making Faulkner only the second person to win two Pulitzers for Fiction (Booth Tarkington was the first, John Updike would later follow).  It would be made into a film starring Steve McQueen in 1969.  The Reivers would be the only post-Nobel novel to be printed in the gold Vintage edition.
  • 

    Faulkner’s final novel and second Pulitzer Prize winner.

    Editions:

  • 1st Edition  (Random House)  –  1962
  • Chatto & Windus  –  1962  (3rd impression)
  • Signet movie cover  (Q4033)  –  1969
  • Vintage  –  white  (0394703391)  –  @1970
  • Vintage  –  black  (0394703391)  –  @1975
  • Vintage  –  gold  (0679741925)  –  1992
• Snopes  (1964)
  • This is the complete work of The Hamlet, The Town and The Mansion.  It appeared in my Top 100 novel list at #71.  Because it was written over a period of some 30 years, it does encompass some contradictions.  But the style of the book remains the same, from start to finish (though The Mansion isn’t nearly as funny as The Hamlet is).  The books together as a trilogy were first published together in 1964, as a box set of hardcovers with no dust jackets.  They would later be printed together in one volume in 1994 by the Modern Library.
  • Editions:
  • Modern Library  –  gold  (0679600922)  –  1994
• 

  Flags in the Dust – the original version of Sartoris

  Flags in the Dust  (1973)

  • This is the original version of Sartoris, as Faulkner had submitted it in 1928.  This was rejected by his publisher and eventually it was heavily edited (and had the title changed) before it was published in January of 1929 by a different publisher.  In 1973, Random House decided to finally release the book as it had been originally submitted, though Sartoris had not been a Random House publication.  It then replaced Sartoris in the Vintage lineup.  This appears in the second 100 of my top 100 here.
  • Editions:
  • 1st Edition  (Random House, 0394465911)
  • Vintage – black  (0394712390)
    • As far as I know, this was the only U.S. paperback of Flags in the Dust that had been printed until the recent new trade editions of Faulkner finally gave it a new one after almost 40 years.  This may have also been the first in the black Vintage series.  It was one of the earliest books in the Borders inventory system because of when it was released and because it never, in the history of Borders, appeared in a different edition.  Rather uniquely, in this book there is a list of other Faulkner books, a list which not only includes his novels, but also all the short story collections (even the long out-of-print ones) and The Wishing Tree and New Orleans Sketches.

The Short Stories:

• 

  These Thirteen

  These 13  (1931)

  • This was Faulkner’s first short story collection.  It has several of his most widely known stories, the most well-known of those being “A Rose for Emily”.  The only U.S. reprint of These 13 was the Franklin Library edition in 1979.  It has never been printed in paperback, namely because at the time that Faulkner first started appearing in paperback, Collected Stories came out and it replaced this in Faulkner’s in-print works.  In the U.K. it was reprinted in 1958 as part II of a three volume hardcover set (Volume I was Uncle Willy and Other Stories, which I have never seen).  Finding These 13 in any edition is rare – I paid $100 for my 1st Edition even though it has no dust jacket and is in poor shape (and I got a 50% employee discount).  Random House currently has it in print as an Ebook.
  • Editions:
  • 1st Edition  (Jonathan Cape & Harrison Smith)  –  1931
  • Chatto & Windus  (Volume II of Collected Short Stories)  –  1958
  • Franklin Library  –  1979
• 

  Doctor Martino and Other Stories

  Doctor Martino and Other Stories  (1934)

  • This was Faulkner’s second short story collection, covering the stories from the early thirties, most notably “Smoke”, “Turn About” and “Wash”.  Like These 13, it was never printed in paperback.  It was, also like These 13, printed by Chatto & Windus in the Collected Short Stories set as Volume III.  Copies of Doctor Martino are exceedingly difficult to find and neither of my copies has a dust jacket and my 1st Edition is in fairly poor shape.
  • Editions:
  • 1st Edition  (Harrison Smith and Robert Haas)  –  1934
  • Chatto & Windus  (Volume III of Collected Short Stories)  –  1958
• 

  Knight’s Gambit

  Knight’s Gambit  (1949)

  • A collection of mystery stories all starring Gavin Stevens.  One of the easiest books with which to approach Faulkner.  When working on what to be included in Collected Stories in the fall of 1948, Faulkner decided to have all the Gavin Stevens mystery stories pulled together and published in a volume before the Collected Stories.  Though this was printed at least twice in Signet editions, it would be one of the last Faulkner books to be added to the Vintage series, not being printed until 1978.
  • Editions:
  • Signet 1st Edition  (825)  –  1950  (2 copies)
  • Chatto & Windus  –  1960
  • Vintage  –  black  (0394727290)  –  1978

• 

  The Collected Stories of William Faulkner

  Collected Stories of William Faulkner  (1950)

  • This collection, which would encompass all of the stories in These Thirteen and Doctor Martino (and thus they would be allowed to go out of print) and all of the published stories after would be the second winner of the National Book Award.  Given that so many people first encounter Faulkner either through “Barn Burning” or “A Rose for Emily”, this is a great way to introduce yourself to Faulkner.  The stories are grouped into six sections by themes, which had been suggested by Malcolm Cowley at least as early as 1945 (see Selected Letters, p 203).
  • Editions:
  • 1st Edition  (Random House)  –  1950
  • Vintage  –  black  (0394722574)  –  1977
  • Penguin  (published as The Penguin Collected Stories of William Faulkner, 0140090266)  –  1985
  • Vintage  –  gold  (0679764038)  –  1995
  • Vintage  –  new  (9780679764038)  –  2012
• 

  Big Woods

  Big Woods: The Hunting Stories  (1955)

  • Though this is a short story collection of four different hunting stories (one published in the 30’s, two that had been in Go Down Moses and one seeing print for the first time), it almost manages to connect them together as a novel, with bridging sections.  Possibly because all of these stories are either in Collected Stories or Uncollected Stories, this did not appear in paperback until it was added to the Vintage gold series in 1994.  The paperback does not have the lovely Edward Shenton illustrations from the 1st Edition.
  • Editions:
  • 1st Edition  (Random House)  –  1955
  • Vintage  –  gold  (0679752528)  –  1994
• 

  Three different Modern Library version of Selected Short Stories of William Faulkner.

  Selected Short Stories of William Faulkner  (1962)

  • This is a collection done exclusively by the Modern Library – if you notice all the copies are various Modern Library editions.  But this, for those who just want an introduction to Faulkner, is probably the single best book to buy.  It has all of his most famous stories, all of which had been in Collected Short Stories except “Race at Morning” which wasn’t written until 5 years after CSS came out.  There is also a white dust jacket version of this, which I clearly don’t have.  This was the first posthumous collection of Faulkner’s, though it was planned before he died, as evidenced from a September 1961 letter in Selected Letters.
  • Editions:
  • Modern Library 1st Edition  (ML 324)  –  1962
  • Modern Library  –  tan  (0394604563)  –  1978
  • Modern Library  –  gold  (0679424784)  –  1993
• 

  Mayday and Father Abraham – both printed in their original forms long after Faulkner had died.

  Mayday  (1977)

  • This is a very short little fable (how short?  –  well, the introduction is longer than the actual text) that Faulkner wrote for Helen Baird, who he wanted to marry.  It was originally printed in a limited edition in 1977.
  • 1st Trade Edition  (University of Notre Dame Press, 02681339x)  –  1978
• 

  The Uncollected Stories of William Faulkner

  Uncollected Stories of William Faulkner  (1979)

  • This collection consists of three types of stories.  The first are those which were later revised and incorporated into novels (which is wonderful for seeing the changes that came about between the publication of the original stories and how they would later appear in the books The Unvanquished, The Hamlet, Go Down Moses, Big Woods and The Mansion).  The second type of stories are those which were published at some point but had not been in The Collected Stories of William Faulkner or Knight’s Gambit.  This includes “Idyll in the Desert” which after being rejected by seven magazines was published by Random House in a limited edition in 1931.  The third type is stories that had never before been published.  Like The Collected Stories, this was printed as a trade, not a mass market when printed by Vintage in the black edition.
  • Editions:
  • 1st Edition  (Random House, 0394400445)  –  1979
  • Vintage  –  black  (0394746562)  –  1981
  • Vintage  –  gold  (0375701095)  –  1997
• Father Abraham  (1983)
  • This is the first version of a story that was written around 1926.  It would later see print in a modified form as “Spotted Horses” in 1931, and then be modified again to be the early part of The Hamlet.  It is a very useful tool for witnessing the gradual development of what would eventually become Snopes.
  • 1st Edition  (Random House, 039453722x)  –  1983

The two poetry collections of Faulkner’s that I have.

The Poetry:

Though Faulkner isn’t thought of as a poet, his first published book, The Marble Faun, published in 1924, was a small book of poetry.  It is difficult to find, even in reprints (it has been reprinted with A Green Bough, his 1933 collection of poetry).  1st editions of Marble Faun currently can be found for prices between $22,000 and $125,000 as there are less than 100 copies still around.  But since I don’t have either of those, they aren’t catalogued here.

• Helen: A Courtship and Mississippi Poems  (1981)
  • These are all very early poems that pre-date any of the novels or short stories.  The introduction forms the majority of the bulk of the text.
  • 1st Edition  (Tulane University and Yoknapatawpha Press, 0916242121)  –  1981
• Vision in Spring  (1984)
  • This was a 14 poem cycle that was originally written for Estelle Faulkner when she was still married to her first husband.
  • 1st Edition, 2nd printing  (University of Texas Press, 029278712x)  –  1984

The various Faulkner collections and miscellany.

The Collections and Miscellany:

These are various collections of works that Faulkner wrote that have been published outside the format of his novels or the specific collections of short stories.  A few of them were published in his lifetime, but most are part of the great amount of his work, either published or previously unpublished, that have been gathered together after his death.

• 

  My Portable Faulkner collection shows the evolution of the Viking Portable Library.

  The Portable Faulkner  (1946)

  • This is the collection that saved Faulkner’s career.  There are many things written about it, included all the stuff I wrote here (which includes descriptions for the editions).  It is the first appearance of the Appendix to The Sound and the Fury, which would later be included in various editions of TSATF, sometimes at the end and sometimes (oddly) at the beginning.  It was reprinted in 1950 as the Indispensable Faulkner by The Book Society (in the collection photo, but not the Portable picture).  It was revised in 1967.  Because of the introduction by Malcolm Cowley (who also edited it) and because of the structure he gave it, it is still the best evidence for the importance of Faulkner in American Literature.  Like many editions listed at the end of the post, this book was reprinted using the same ISBN, so be careful if you’re trying to order a specific edition online.
  • Editions:
  

  The various covers to the Portable Faulkner through the years.

  • 1st Edition  –  1946
  • The Indispensable Faulkner  (The Book Society)  –  1950
  • sail  (P18)  –  1966
  • Revised Edition – sail  (P18)  –  1967
  • Penguin  (0140150188)  –  1977
  • white  (0140150188)  –  1993
  • black  (014243728x)  –  2003
• The Faulkner Reader  (1954)
  • This is a Faulkner collection fairly similar to what is in the Portable Faulkner, except without the Cowley essay.  My guess is that Random House put this together to have their own work to try to sell (and they later put it in the Modern Library Giant series); Faulkner letters from the period refer to it as “the Book of the Month mss”, and since the Book Club edition is visually the same as the 1st Edition (except for the presence of the blind stamp), it may have been done to introduce new readers to Faulkner.  It includes the entire text of The Sound and the Fury.  Though it includes kind of a greatest hits of Faulkner, it lacks the underlying structure that Cowley provided for the Portable.
  • Editions:
  • Book Club Edition  (Random House)  –  1954
  • Modern Library 1st Edition  (MLG 82)  –  1959
  • Modern Library  –  tan  (0394603990)  –  1977
• Three Famous Short Novels  (1958)
  • This combines “Spotted Horses” (which forms part of The Hamlet), “Old Man” (one half of Wild Palms) and “The Bear” (from Go Down Moses).  First published as a Modern Library paperback and first published by Vintage in 1961.  The Modern Library and Vintage designs are the same.
  • Editions:
  • Modern Library paperback  (P36)  –  1958
  • Vintage  –  white  (0394701496)  –  @1966
  • Vintage  –  black  (0394701496)  –  @1975
• New Orleans Sketches  (1958, ed. Carvel Collins)
  • A series of pieces that Faulkner wrote and had published when he was living in New Orleans in 1925.  The 2nd Edition includes an extra piece.
  • Editions:
  • 1st paperback  (Grove Press, Inc., E292)  –  1961
  • 2nd Edition  (Random House, 0394438183)  –  1968
  • University Press of Mississippi paperback edition  (1578064716)  –  2002
• Faulkner in the University  (1959)
  • In the Spring of 1957, Faulkner was a writer in residence at the University of Virginia.  These are transcripts of the classes from that semester.  They are a useful glimpse into the mind of a working writer during the time that he was finishing the Snopes Trilogy.
  • Vintage  –  white  (V-269)  –  1965
• Early Prose and Poetry  (1962, ed. Carvel Collins)
  • These are all small pieces (and drawings) from the early 20’s, mostly published during the time that Faulkner was living in New Orleans.  This was initially printed in Japan as Faulkner’s University Pieces.
  • Editions:
  • 1st Edition  (Atlantic Monthly Press)  –  1962
  • 1st U.K. Edition  (Jonathan Cape)  –  1963
• Faulkner at West Point  (1964, ed. Joseph L. Fant and Robert Ashley)
  • This was one of the first posthumous pieces put together.  It contains the section from The Reivers that Faulkner read at West Point in April of 1962, just three months before he died.  It also contains the complete transcript of the long Q & A session from the same trip.  It was apparently reprinted by Vintage in 1969, though I have never even seen personally that edition and there are no images on LibraryThing (though they are on the net), so it must be rare.
  • Editions:
  • 1st Edition  (Random House)  –  1964
  • West Point Bicentennial Reprint  (University Press of Mississippi, 1578064457)  –  2002
• Essays, Speeches and Public Letters  (1966, ed. James B. Meriwether)
  • This covers all the public works that Faulkner did during his career, including speeches and various letters and essays.  This was the first thing that Random House produced that was really intended to be added to his oeuvre posthumously.  Because of when it was first printed, it was in the matching white dust jacket to the novels that were then being re-released.  The 2004 edition was expanded by the original editor and included many more pieces that had not been available upon the original publication.
  • Editions:
  • Random House  –  white  (03944236150)  –  1966  (3rd printing)
  • 1st U.K. Edition  (Chatto & Windus)  –  1967
  • Modern Library Classics  (081297137x)  –  2004
• The Faulkner-Cowley File  (1966, ed. Malcolm Cowley)
  • The work that Cowley did in putting together The Portable Faulkner completely turned around Faulkner’s career.  That began a long correspondence and friendship.  This documents those years with various letters between the two and additional material from Cowley.
  • 1st U.K. Edition  (Chatto & Windus)  –  1966
• Lion in the Garden: Interviews with William Faulkner, 1926-1962  (1968, ed. James B. Meriwether and Michael Millgate)
  • It’s good to know that what they do with writers today, finding everything and releasing it isn’t a new thing.  These are pretty much every interview with Faulkner that had seen print, or at least that Random House could find and put together.
  • 1st Edition  (Random House)  –  1968
• The Selected Letters of William Faulkner  (1977, ed. Joseph Blotner)
  • This used to be a regular thing which is now dying out – the collection of letters from writers that would be released posthumously.  They often take a while, as they must all be gathered and edited.  A limited First Edition was printed by the Franklin Library for members of the First Edition Society which included a companion guide called A Faulkner Perspective.  When it was added to the Vintage lineup, it was a in a trade edition, rather than a mass market, just like the Collected Stories.  This title does not appear to currently be in print.
  • Editions:
  • 1st Edition Limited Edition  (Franklin Library)  –  1976
  • 1st Edition  (Random House, 0394494857)  –  1977
  • Vintage  –  black  (0394725050)  –  1978
• To Have and Have Not  (1980, The University of Wisconsin Press, ed. Bruce F. Kawin, 0299080900)
  • This is a full printed edition of the screenplay for To Have and Have Not, written by Faulkner and Julus Furthman.  The interesting thing is that Faulkner’s name is nowhere on the cover – it is clearly marketed towards film people and not towards Faulkner people.
• The William Faulkner Manuscripts  (44 volumes in a 25 part set)  (Garland Publishing, Inc., 1987)
  • This set, arranged by Joseph Blotner, covers the original typescripts of all the novels and short story collections.  Several of them cover multiple volumes.  I only have two of them (Sanctuary Vol II (0824068114) and Light in August Vol II (0824068149) because they are really expensive (they originally retailed for something like $75 a book and are a lot more now).  They are very nice (and very big – they don’t fit on the Faulkner bookcase at all).
• Stallion Road: A Screenplay  (ed. Louis Daniel Brodsky and Robert W. Hamblin, University Press of Mississippi, 0878053719)  –  1989
  • Though this was eventually filmed and released in 1947, the film did not use Faulkner’s screenplay, which is published here for the first time.
• 

  The complete Faulkner in the Library of America.

  The Library of America Collections:

  • The Library of America is a wonderful series of books designed to create a permanent in-print record of the most important American writers.  Faulkner was one of the earliest authors added to the series, beginning with #25 – the latest author in the series at the time (Jack London was the only other 2oth Century Writer in the series at the time).  Over the course of 21 years, all of his novels were printed in the series.  Because I have first printings of all of the books, they provide a timeline of the price of the books over the years.  Those prices are why I won’t end up doing a For Love of Books post on LofA – they are just too expensive and I don’t have many of them.
  • Novels: 1930-1935  (Library of America, 1985, 0940450267)
    • This volume cover As I Lay Dying, Sanctuary, Light in August and Pylon.  This is #25 in the Library of America catalog.  However, since this is a first printing, it carries no catalog # from Library on the dust jacket or inside.  There is no list in the back of the book of all the titles available – only on the inside of the dust jacket and this is listed towards the end under Spring 1985.  The cover price is $27.50.
  • Novels:  1936-1940  (Library of America, 1990, 0940450550)
    • This volume includes Absalom Absalom, The Unvanquished, The Wild Palms (listed as If I Forget Thee Jerusalem) and The Hamlet.  This is #48 in the Library of America catalog.  There is still no catalog # on the dust jacket or list in the back of the book, but this time the catalog number is included on the copyright page.  It is listed on the inside of the dust jacket as “New and Forthcoming”.  Interestingly, it is listed at $35.00 on the listing on the inside of the dust jacket but the actual price on the book is $32.50.
  • Novels: 1942-1954  (Library of America, 1994, 0940450852)
    • This volume covers Go Down Moses, Intruder in the Dust, Requiem for a Nun and A Fable.  This is #73 in the Library of America catalog.  The cover price is $35.00
  • Novels: 1957-1962  (Library of America, 1999, 1883011698)
    • This volume covers The Town, The Mansion and The Reivers.  This is #112 in the Library of America catalog.  The cover price is $35.00
  • Novels: 1926-1929  (Library of America, 2006, 1931082898)
    • This volume covers Soldiers’ Pay, Mosquitoes, Flags in the Dust (in the later form, not as Sartoris) and The Sound and the Fury.  This is #164 in the Library of America catalog.  The cover price is $40.00, which the books still retail at.

My various reference, critical and biographical books on Faulkner.

The Reference Books:

Of course, I have a good size collection of reference books about Faulkner.  Most of them are either reference guides or critical works.  There are also a few biographies.  They are grouped together down below by either Reference (various things that don’t fit into other categories), The Brodsky Collection (a series of books documenting the collection), Critical Works (actually take a critical rather than just informational approach), Biography and Bibliography.

• Reference:
  

  The Faulkner obituary from the Boston Globe that came in my second copy of the small little William Faulkner book.

  • William Faulkner  (University of Minnesota Pamphlets on American Writers No. 3, 1959)  (2 copies)
    • This is a short little pamphlet (only 43 pages) that simply gives a bit about Faulkner and his work.  I actually have two copies of it because I couldn’t remember that I had already bought it.  But I have no regrets about buying it the second time because it was the second copy of it that contained his obituary.  Whoever had owned the book previously had cut out the obituary from the Boston Globe and put it inside the book and left it there.
  • Faulkner’s People: A Complete Guide and Index to Characters in the Fiction of William Faulkner  (Robert W. Kirk with Marvin Klotz, University of California Press, 1963)
    • An excellent guide to every character in every novel and story, including an index to show the cross-referencing and even a little guide that explains inconsistencies in specific characters across various works.  This is the original hardcover.  I also have a paperback (also UoC Press) from 1965.
  • A Reader’s Guide to William Faulkner  (Edmond L. Volpe, 1964, Thames and Hudson)
    • A very good in depth guide to all the novels.  It includes the very valuable timelines to several of the novels as well.  This is the original British harcover.  I also have an American paperback (Noonday Press, 1967).
  • A Handbook of Faulkner  (Dorothy Tuck, 1965, Chatto & Windus)
    • A good reference guide to all the novels and the major characters, though not as in depth as the reader’s guide.
  • Nobel Prize Library: William Faulkner, Eugene O’Neill, John Steinbeck  (Alexis Gregory, 1971)
    • This is part of a series of books that have pieces on Nobel Prize winners for Literature.  It includes the presentation speech, the acceptance speech and “A Rose for Emily” and the entire text of As I Lay Dying.
  • Ghosts of Rowan Oak: William Faulkner’s Ghost Stories for Children  (Dean Faulkner Wells, Yoknaptawpha Press, 1980, 0916242071)
    • This is exactly what it it says it is – ghost stories remembered by Dean Faulkner Welles that her uncle used to tell.  This copy is a 1st Edition hardcover that is actually signed by Wells.
  • The Best of Bad Faulkner: Choice Entries from the Faux Faulkner Contest  (ed. Dean Faulkner Wells, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1991, 0156118505)
  • The Faulkner Newsletter: Collected Issues  (Yoknapatawpha Press, 1994, 0916242668)
    • This was a newsletter that ran for several years (and might still run).  This was a collected edition of the first 54 issues, covering January 1981 to April of 94.
  • William Faulkner: Barn Burning Journal  (Paperblank Press, 1996, 1551560496)
    • Faulkner might not have the collectibles market that Tolkien has but he has this journal and I have a copy.
• 

  The Brodsky Collection.

  The Brodsky Collection:

  • Louis Daniel Brodsky is by far the biggest collector of Faulkner works and memorabilia.  His Collection is now housed at the Center for Faulkner Studies at Southeast Mississippi State University.  The first book is a catalogue.  The other five books are the guide to the collection.  All five books were released in hardcover.  The second and third were released in paperback as well (which is what I have).
  • Selections from the William Faulkner Collection of Louis Daniel Brodsky: A Descriptive Catalogue  (Robert W. Hamblin & Louis Daniel Brodsky, 1979, University Press of Virginia, 0813908302)
  • Faulkner: A Comprehensive Guide to the Brodsky Collection  (ed. Louis Daniel Brodsky and Robert W. Hamblin, University Press of Mississippi):
    • Volume I: The Biobibliography  (1982, 0878051597)
    • Volume II: The Letters  (1984, 0878052151)
    • Volume III: The De Gaulle Story by William Faulkner  (1984, 0878052542)
    • Volume IV: Battle Cry, a Screenplay by William Faulkner  (1985, 0878052534)
    • Volume V: Manuscripts and Documents  (1988, 0878053204)
• Critical Works:
  • William Faulkner  (Michael Millgate, Oliver and Boyd, 1961)
    • This is a small work designed to introduce British audiences to Faulkner, written while he was still alive.  A rather small book that only covers basic criticism.
  • William Faulkner: Three Decades of Criticism  (ed. Frederick J. Hoffman and Olga W. Vickery, Harcourt Brace and Jovanovich, 1960)
    • This was originally published in 1951 as Two Decades of Criticism.  Then it was republished in 1960 with new inclusions (including some major pieces by Robert Penn Warren and Sartre).  This is a very valuable book of Faulkner criticism.
  • Faulkner: Twentieth Century Views, A Collection of Critical Essays  (ed. Robert Penn Warren, Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966)  (2 copies)
    • Another very valuable collection of critical essays on Faulkner.  But this is also evidence of why someone like me needs to carry a notebook.  I bought a second copy at some point because I must not have realized I already had it (either that, or it might have come in a big bulk Faulkner buy I did on Ebay several years ago).  And yet, I haven’t been able to bring myself to get rid of it because it’s part of the Faulkner collection.
  • Faulkner: The Major Years, A Critical Study  (Melvin Backman, Indiana University Press, 1966)
    • A solid enough critical work that covers Faulkner’s work from the years 1929 to 1942, when he wrote the bulk of his novels.
  • Twentieth Century Critical Interpretations of The Sound and the Fury: A Collection of Critical Essays  (ed. Michael H. Cowan, Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968)
  • An Investigation of the Chief Causes of Individual Aspiration and Frustration in the Regional Novels of William Faulkner Before 1949  (H.P. Absalom, Thesis, 1970)
    • Several years ago I did a big buy of Faulkner books on Ebay, including almost all the British hardcovers in my collection.  This was one of the miscellaneous books in that collection.  Given that many of the British books have Absalom’s name written in, I suspect that he might have died and someone was selling off the stuff.  It’s a worthwhile thesis.
  • Faulkner’s Revision of Absalom, Absalom!: A Collation of the Manuscript and the Published Book  (Gerald Langford, University of Texas Press, 1971, 0292701136)
  • Faulkner’s Revision of Sanctuary: A Collation of the Unrevised Galleys and the Published Book  (Gerald Langford, University of Texas Press, 1972, 0292724004)
  • Faulkner and Film  (Bruce F. Kawin, Frederick Ungar Publishing Co, 1977, 0804424543)
    • This would seem at first glance to be a reference book, but it in fact is a small work of criticism, where Unwin tries to establish that influence of film upon Faulkner and his work as well as discussing Faulkner’s career writing for films.
  • William Faulkner: Toward Yoknapatawpha and Beyond  (Cleanth Brooks, Yale University Press, 1978, 0300022042)
    • A major critical work by one of the major critical writers of the 20th Century.  This is a companion volume to Brooks’ first Faulkner book and this deals only with the non-Yoknapatawpha books.
  • Faulkner and Psychology  (ed. Donald M. Kartiganer and Ann J. Abadie, University Press of Mississippi, 1994, 0878057439)
    • This is a collection from the 1991 Faulkner conference, all themed around psychology.
  • William Faulkner: Critical Assessments  (4 volumes in a box, ed. Henry Claridge, 1999, Helm Information, 1873403143)
    • This is how you can tell when someone is either planning to get a PhD with a specialty in Faulkner (that was the plan), is completely certifiable (survey would probably say yes but what do those idiots know) or has OCD that is over-whelming any attempt at reason (have you seen the rest of this post?  or the Tolkien post?).  And those are just the signs of someone who bought this (I keep the sale sticker of $99.99 on the box but apparently it actually retails for $1000 so this was a bargain).  What does it say about me that I actually read all 2632 pages?  Oh, it’s a four volume set of critical essays covering absolutely every work by Faulkner bound in a nice fake leather that comes in a cardboard box.
  • Faulkner at 100: Retrospect and Prospect  (ed. Donald M. Kartiganer and Ann J. Abadie, University Press of Mississippi, 2000, 1578062896)
    • This is the collection from the 1997 Faulkner conference on the event of the centenary of his birth.
• Biographies:
  • my brother Bill  (John Faulkner, Pocket Books, 1964 – originally printed in 1963)
    • This is less a biography than a memoir by John Faulkner about his time with his brother.  It’s a fairly short book and it’s okay.
  • Faulkner: A Biography  (Joseph Blotner, Random House, 2 volumes, 1974, 039547452x)
    • This is the the standard for Faulkner biographies.  It’s also ridiculously big (often sold as either two volumes or as an abridged one volume version).  This is the original two volume set in the slipcase, 1st Edition.
  • Faulkner: The Man and the Artist  (Stephen B. Oates, Harper & Row, 1987, 0060157712)
    • The weakest of the Faulkner biographies, and unfortunately, the one I read first.
  • One Matchless Time: A Life of William Faulkner  (Jay Parini, HarperCollins Publishers, 2004, 0066210720)
    • A decent enough biography but totally unnecessary by this time.  I bought this mainly because I wanted to buy something at the bookstore we were in (the Barnes and Noble in Peoria where Veronica used to work) and this was on Remainder.
  • Faulkner and Love: The Women Who Shaped His Art  (Judith L. Sensibar, Yale University Press, 2009, 9780300115031)
    • This got a lot of press when it first came out and I was surprised to find it in a used bookstore shortly thereafter for less than half the original price.  But it had seemed like a critical study and really it is a biography that simply focuses on the women in Faulkner’s life.  It tries to do too much with biographical criticism and I don’t think it really works all that well.
• Bibliographies:
  • William Faulkner: A Check List  (James B. Meriwether, Princeton University Library, 1957)
  • “Man Working,” 1919-1962, William Faulkner: A Catalogue of the William Faulkner Collections at the University of Virginia  (compiled by Linton R. Massey, Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia, 1968)
  • The First Editions of William Faulkner  (Robert B. Harmon, Hermes Publications, 1978)
  • William Faulkner: The Carl Petersen Collection  (Catalogue 48.  Serendipity Books.  1991)
    • This was the single most valuable book when determining dates and other editions available when compiling this post.

The Editions:

My 1st Edition collection.

First Editions

The first group of books are all missing dust jackets and none of them are in particularly great shape.  Starting with Absalom, all of them are published by Random House (with a couple of rare exceptions among the posthumous publications).  These are really the crown jewel of my Faulkner collection.  They are listed in order of appearance in the picture, from left to right, top to bottom.  The top shelf are all things printed while he was alive (Big Woods is moved down because of height) and are in chronological order.

• These Thirteen
• Doctor Martino and Other Stories
• Pylon
• Absalom, Absalom!
• Go Down Moses, and Other Stories
• Intruder in the Dust (actually a 2nd)
• The Collected Stories of William Faulkner
• Requiem for a Nun
• A Fable
• The Town
• The Mansion
• The Reivers
• Big Woods
• The Selected Letters of William Faulkner
• Father Abraham
• Essays, Speeches and Public Letters
• Helen: A Courtship
• Mayday
• Lion in the Garden
• Faulkner at West Point
• Flags in the Dust
• The Uncollected Stories of William Faulkner
• Sanctuary: The Original Text
• The Sound and the Fury: The Corrected Text
• Absalom, Absalom!: The Corrected Text
• New Orleans Sketches
• Early Prose and Poetry

My First Edition Library Faulkner collection.

First Edition Library

The First Edition Library was something created in the 1980’s as a subscription service.  They reprinted classic literature exactly as it first appeared, typos and errors included.  The only differences between an actual 1st Edition and something from the First Edition Library are the slipcases they come in, that the new ones are printed on acid-free paper, a small box on the copyright page indicating it as part of the FEL and a small indication on the inside rear flap of the dust jacket (so that neither book nor jacket can be used to fool people).  I have four of the titles from Faulkner, though there are three others available that I have never seen (Soldiers Pay, Mosquitoes, The Reivers).  These titles are listed chronologically.

• The Sound and the Fury
• As I Lay Dying
• Light in August
• Absalom, Absalom!

The gorgeous leatherbound Franklin Library Faulkner books.

Franklin Library

There are not a whole lot of uniform characteristics about the various Faulkner books published by the Franklin Library except for the fact that they are all bound in leather and they all look gorgeous.  They aren’t the same color, aren’t the same size and every title has a different format on the spine.  There are a lot of Faulkner books published by either Franklin Library or Easton Press but, while they look great, they tend to be $40 or $50 a pop, so I don’t have a lot of them.

• The Sound and the Fury
  • Illustrated, 50th anniversary publication.
• These Thirteen
  • Illustrated, part of The Collected Stories of the World’s Greatest Writers series.
• Light in August
  • Illustrated, part of The Collector’s Library of the World’s Best-Loved Books series.
• Absalom, Absalom!
  • Illustrated (in color), part of The 100 Greatest Masterpieces of American Literature series.
• Selected Letters of William Faulkner
  • True 1st Edition, published in advance of 1st Edition, which came with A Faulkner Perspective, a paperback companion to the book not generally available (not pictured, but in other pictures).

The complete selection of Faulkner books I have from the Modern Library.

The Modern Library

Faulkner began being published in the Modern Library in 1932, even before he was being published by Random House (Random House actually grew out of the Modern Library when the new owners of the Modern Library, Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer thought they might start publishing other books “at random”).  Sanctuary was added to the Modern Library in 1932 as #61 (it was actually the second #61, replacing Oscar Wilde’s Fairy Tales and Poems in Prose).  It would be another 14 years before another Faulkner title would be added (it is my hope to write a big Modern Library post at some point, but I keep hoping my collection will grow before that happens, and besides, what could I say that isn’t already here).  It wasn’t until after The Portable Faulkner was published and Faulkner’s reputation began to grow that more titles were added, even though by that time Faulkner had been one of Random House’s authors for a decade.  There are several different forms of Modern Library books and I will be discussing them in total.

A selection of the more picturesque Faulkner Modern Library books.

The Modern Library  (original)

This is the series that was begun in 1917.  Sanctuary was the first title of Faulkner’s added to it, in 1932.  When various publications mention that all but one of Faulkner’s books were out-of-print in 1946 when The Portable Faulkner saved his career, it is the Modern Library version of Sanctuary that they are referring to – it stayed in print from 1932 to 1970, when the Modern Library ended its original series.  Sanctuary was the only Faulkner title to be printed during the old flexible bindings of the Modern Library.  The early titles were all printed with pictorial dust jackets, but in the mid-60’s they re-tooled all the Faulkner dust jackets to have them match the covers currently in-print from Random House and Vintage (see below).  Dating a specific copy of a Modern Library book is very easy if you have the dust jacket and almost impossible to do so without it.  I will talk more about each individual book below.  They are printed in order of when they were added to the Modern Library.  While many books entered and exited the Modern Library between 1917 and 1970, no Faulkner title ever stopped being printed before 1970.

• Sanctuary  (ML 61)  –  1932
  • copy 1  –  1st Edition, 1932, flexible binding, no dust jacket, written in pencil inside: “Complimentary copy from the publishers, May 1932”
  • copy 2  –  1933, flexible binding, very fragile dust jacket, inside is a newspaper clipping about him winning the Nobel Prize and a review of The Portable Faulkner
  • copy 3  –  1951, 2nd dust jacket
  • copy 4  –  1967, 3rd dust jacket, white uniform dust jacket
• The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying  (ML 187)  –  1946
  • note:  This was the second Modern Library title to use #187.  In 1966 these two titles would be split and TSATF would keep the number.  This is the first printed version of TSATF that would use the Appendix written for The Portable Faulkner.
  • 1955, colored dust jacket
• Light in August  (ML 88)  –  1950
  • note:  Light in August was actually the 5th book in the Modern Library series to be given #88.
  • copy 1  –  1956, 1st dust jacket
  • copy 2  –  @1960, impossible to determine for certain as it has no dust jacket, date approximated by binding style
  • copy 3 and 4  –  1964, white uniform dust jackets
• Absalom, Absalom!  (ML 271)  –  1951
  • copy 1  –  1951, not a 1st, so it must be a very early printing, pictorial dust jacket, ex-library, which sadly covers up the number on the spine
  • copy 2  –  1964, white uniform dust jacket, not in picture because purchased after pictures were taken
• Go Down, Moses  (ML 175)  –  1955
  • note:  Go Down, Moses was the 4th book in the Modern Library series to be given #175.  There is also an earlier pictorial dust jacket that I don’t have a copy of.
  • 1966, white uniform dust jacket
• The Faulkner Reader  (MLG 82)  –  1959
  • 1st Edition, the only Faulkner book to be released in the Modern Library Giant series
• Selected Short Stories of William Faulkner  (ML 324)  –  1962
  • 1st Edition, colored dust jacket, an exclusive Modern Library collection planned before Faulkner’s death but released after he died; there is a white uniform dust jacket that I don’t have a copy of.
• Intruder in the Dust  (ML 351)  –  1964
  • 1965, white uniform dust jacket
• The Sound and the Fury  (ML 187)  –  1966
  • note:  1966, the Modern Library finally stopped publishing The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying together in one volume and split them up, with TSATF keeping the Modern Library number (they had, oddly, done this in the paperback version way back in 1960 but just didn’t publish AILD).
  • 1967, 2 copies, both with white uniform dust jacket, one is an ex-library
• A Fable  (ML 368)  –  1966, Sep
  • 1st Edition with white uniform dust jacket
  • note:  With A Fable added to the Modern Library in 1966 to go along with Go Down Moses and Intruder in the Dust, we have the only three novels that Random House had rights to that weren’t being printed in either their Vintage series during the white uniform covers or in hardcover by Random House with the white uniform hardcovers.
• As I Lay Dying  (ML 378)  –  1967, Feb
  • 1st Edition with white uniform dust jacket
• Pylon  (ML 380)  –  1967, Sep
  • 1st Edition with white uniform dust jacket
  • note:  Pylon was not originally published by Random House.  So it is interesting that this copy, like the Random House white uniform hardcover listed below is printed from photographic reproductions of the original book as printed in 1935 by Harrison Smith and Robert Haas, Inc..

The three books from the Modern Library in the 70’s and 80’s.

The Modern Library  (the middle years)

In 1970, the Modern Library ceased publication.  But in 1977, it was revived on a more moderate scale.  Only selected titles were printed during this stretch and they were all given matching tan dust jackets and had the numbering system dropped (they were given ISBNs, some of which matched the old numbers).  The only two Faulkner titles during this time were The Faulkner Reader (which had never been printed by Vintage) and Selected Short Stories (which had always been a Modern Library exclusive).  In the mid-80’s they started adding new titles with new dust jackets – they were a darker tan and they had glorious woodcut illustrations on the front cover.  In this edition, The Wild Palms was added in 1984.

• The Faulkner Reader
• Selected Short Stories of William Faulkner
• The Wild Palms  (1984)  –  1st Edition

The four titles from the rather short-lived Modern Library paperback series.

The Modern Library  (paperbacks)

The Modern Library paperback series began in 1950 and lasted until 1960, when it went defunct in favor of the Vintage mass markets.  There were four different Faulkner titles published with a fifth one planned and announced (The Town), though the series would go defunct before it was printed.  The first titles that they printed were titles already available in the Modern Library and thus we have a printing of The Sound and the Fury with As I Lay Dying, complete with the same cover.  But the paperback series would end that and take the same number and assign it to The Sound and the Fury by itself.  There would be two covers of The Hamlet – a red one and a blue one (scarce).  All three of the titles in print in 1960 would carry over their pictorial covers into their initial Vintage printings in 1961.  They are listed by original printings, though only my copy of TSATF&AILD is an early printing – the rest are from near the end of the series.

• The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying  (P6)  –  1950
• The Sound and the Fury  (P6)  –  1956
• The Hamlet  (P18)  –  1956
• Three Famous Short Novels  (p36)  –  1958

The three different types of Modern Library College Editions – old, middle, new.

The Modern Library  (college edition)

The Modern Library College Editions began sometime in the 1960’s.  The original format was the one on the left in the picture – gray covers, with a colored band with the title and the Modern Library torchbearer above it.  They each had a catalog number beginning with a T.  The only Faulkner titles released in that format were Light in August and Absalom, Absalom (which I don’t have).  Then came the second format, with the title above a large colored box on the cover and no torchbearer.  There was still a T# on the spine but later copies also had an SBN on the back (beginning with 394309).  In this format they added Intruder in the Dust and The Sound and the Fury.  Then, in the 1980’s, McGraw-Hill took over the distribution of them and the ISBNs changed and the format went to a solid color.  Intruder in the Dust seems to have been dropped since the format change.

• Light in August  (T68)  –  1965  –  all 3 formats
• Absalom, Absalom!  (T78)  –  2nd and 3rd formats
• Intruder in the Dust  (T88)  –  2nd format only
• The Sound and the Fury  (T94)  –  2nd and 3rd formats

The gold 1990’s Modern Library editions.

The Modern Library  (current)

In 1992, the Modern Library, for its 75th anniversary, revived itself.  They began to print glorious new hardcover copies with matching gold dust jackets.  Instead of their old publishing ideas (making literature affordable), this time they were making it look nice.  One of the titles printed in the new format in that initial year was The Sound and the Fury.  They then slowly began adding Faulkner titles to the series.  I have all of them except for Go Down, Moses, which for some reason I never see.  In 1994, they printed the entire Snopes Trilogy in one volume.  In 2012, they re-released all of them except Go Down, Moses with new matching stylized dust jackets and introductions, the only one of which I have so far is The Sound and the Fury.  Annoyingly, like with the Vintage trade editions, these use the same ISBNs and I first realized the new releases had come about when the dust jacket image of one of my books on LibraryThing changed because of the ISBN being co-opted.

• The Sound and the Fury  (1992)
• Selected Short Stories of William Faulkner  (1993)
• Absalom, Absalom!  (1993)
• Snopes  (1994)
  • This is a Modern Library exclusive, the only printing of all three Snopes books in one volume.  It is in the giant format.
• As I Lay Dying  (2000)
• Light in August  (2002)  –  giant size
• Essays, Speeches and Public Letters  (2004)
  • This had never been printed in paperback and was expanded for its inclusion in the Modern Library Classics paperback series.  It is the only Faulkner title printed in the series.
• The Sound and the Fury  (2012)

The wonderful pulp designs on the Signet Faulkner books.

Signet

These were the first paperback editions of Faulkner’s books to see print in the U.S..  They were originally printed by Penguin, which was the parent British company, but in 1948 Signet split away and began to publish the paperbacks themselves.  The only two books published before the split were Sanctuary and The Wild Palms (by itself).  I have the latter but not the former, and both were reprinted by Signet using the same covers.  The covers of these old Signet books are part of what make them so wonderful.  There will definitely be a future post about them and I have a number of other books from the same era that aren’t Faulkner that I have bought entirely because of the covers (if you want to see a lot of great images of them go here).  There are a number of variations that I don’t have, some of which use the same catalog numbers and some of which don’t.  Most of the more serious Faulkner titles weren’t published by Signet during this era, instead being added to the Modern Library.  But these got the great covers.  I have put them in approximate year order – it’s easier to tell with the ones that are numbered under the original catalog system.  After they started adding the letters it gets very screwy.

• Sanctuary  (1947)
  • 632  –  Originally a Penguin book, this is the 9th printing, now a Signet book.  The copy Veronica bought because of the cover.
• The Wild Palms  (1948)
  • 659  –  1st Penguin Edition (1948, Jan).  Only the Wild Palms chapters of the book.
  • 659A  –  2nd printing (1948, Mar), but the first by Signet.  This # would be reused with a different cover.
• Old Man  (1948)
  • 692  –  1st printing  (1948, Nov)  – the other half of The Wild Palms.
• Intruder in the Dust  (1949)
  • 743  –  1st printing  (1949, Sep).  Mentions the film on the back but isn’t a movie cover.  This is the edition that has a picture of Faulkner’s brother John on the back labelled as him.  This cover would be used at least once more with a different color border as S1253.
  • S1511  –  7th printing (1958, Mar) with a new cover (not a very good one, moving away from the pulp covers)
  • D1848  –  8th printing  (1960, Sep) with yet another new cover
• Knight’s Gambit  (1950)
  • 825  –  1st printing  (1950, Dec).  Two copies, both of which are 1st printings.
• Pylon  (1951)
  • 863  –  1st printing (1951, Apr).  This is the first time it refers to Faulkner as the winner of the Nobel Prize.
• Soldiers’ Pay  (1951)
  • P2006  –  5th printing  (1961, Oct).  Originally printed in 1951 as 887.  This was the first copy I owned and read of Soldiers’ Pay.
• The Unvanquished  (1952)
  • 977  –  1st printing  (1952, Dec).
• Sartoris  (1953)
  • S1032  –  1st printing  (1953, Jul).  A Signet Giant.
• Sanctuary with Requiem for a Nun  (1954)
  • S1079  –  1st joint printing  (1954, Mar).  A Signet Giant.  It mentions that Sanctuary has had 13 printings separately.

Signet Movie Covers

The various movie cover Signet editions.

Back in the 1950’s they actually used to make movies from Faulkner novels.  That’s not hyperbole.  From 1957 to 1969 five of Faulkner’s novels were filmed (six if you count the two that were combined into one film).  Since then, no English language feature film has been made from one of his novels.  Part of it is that the films themselves weren’t all that great.  But back in that era the films did get made and I have the Signet movie covers to prove it.

• Pylon  (1958)
  • S1485  –  2nd Signet printing (1958, Jan).  The film was The Tarnished Angels, starring Rock Hudson.  The cover photo is of Dorothy Malone.
• The Long Hot Summer  (1958)
  • S1501  –  3rd printing (1958, Apr – first printed in Mar).  Only contains the third book in The Hamlet, which is what the film is loosely based upon.  The film starred Paul Newman (even though you can barely see him in the four pages of movie photos in the center) and Joanne Woodward (this is where they met) but the cover shot is of Anthony Franciosa and the smoldering Lee Remick.
• The Sound and the Fury  (1959)
  • D1628  –  1st Signet printing  (1959, Mar).  The film starred Yul Brynner and Joanne Woodward.
• Sanctuary with Requiem for a Nun  (1961)
  • T1900  –  4th Signet printing (1961, Jan).  The film, made from both books, though only crediting the former, stars Lee Remick (less smoldering this time).
• The Reivers  (1969)
  • Q4033  –  4th printing.  Really belongs with the Classics down below but has a movie cover with star Steve McQueen.

The whole Faulkner Signet collection.

Signet Classics

When Signet first started to move away from the stylish, pulpish covers they began the Signet Classics and the Signet Modern Classics.  They aren’t as interesting as the former but for several Faulkner books they were the only paperbacks available for a long time  Because it’s difficult in these books to get precise printings, I am just going to list them as best I can by catalog number.

• Signet Classic:
• The Unvanquished  (CD9)
• Sanctuary  (CY685)
  • This appears to maybe be a later (3rd) printing of the same edition that is in the Signet Modern Classics below but with a different catalog number.  I have no explanation for this.
• Sartoris  (CW696)
• Sartoris  (CE1412)
  • The former is a 14th printing and costs $1.50.  The latter is a 16th printing and costs $2.50 and has an ISBN.  There is also at least two other catalog # for Sartoris (CY569) listed on the list of titles of other books (CY569 and CQ395).  I have no explanation for how Signet did their catalog numbers.
• Signet Modern Classic:
• The Signet Modern Classics all date from September of 1968 and are all First Printings.  Pylon also appears to be a book in the series (CQ415), though I don’t have it.  I have no idea why A Fable is a CY title and not a CQ title.  While this version of Soldiers’ Pay and A Fable are listed on title lists in the Classics, there is a different version of Wild Palms (CY646).  There are some errors in the title lists – the one in Soldiers’ Pay lists both Pylon and Wild Palms as CQ415 and the one in Wild Palms lists itself as an other title and not A Fable.
• Soldiers’ Pay  (CQ411)
• A Fable  (CY412)
• Sanctuary  (CQ413)
• The Wild Palms  (CQ414)

The mid-60’s white Random House hardcovers.

Random House  (white dust jackets)

These began to appear in 1961 which means that they seem to pre-date the appearance of the same kind of dust jackets in the Modern Library by a couple of years.  These began the same year as the Vintage mass markets (which replaced the Modern Library paperbacks – see below), which bore the same design.  There are at least two books in this edition which I don’t have – As I Lay Dying (1964) and Absalom, Absalom (1966).  Several of these titles also appeared in the Vintage edition and some also appeared in the Modern Library edition.

• Sartoris  (1961)
  • A spring 1967 printing based on clues (see Wild Palms in the white mass markets below). Has an SBN.  9th printing of this edition.
• Sanctuary  (1962)
  • This is that 1962 edition.  It has the 8/62 date on the front flap and the titles match the time period (only 4 Vintage titles listed).
• The Hamlet  (1964)
  • 7th printing of this edition, from Spring 1967.  Has an SBN.
• Essays, Speeches and Public Letters  (1965)
  • Not in the picture, but the original hardcover edition (mine is a 3rd printing) was released with a matching dust jacket to this set.  From 1965, with an SBN.
• Pylon  (1965)
  • Probably the first printing of this edition, based on titles listed, but it is price-clipped, so it’s not possible to tell for certain (the first printing of this edition did not indicate it on the copyright page).
• The Unvanquished  (1965)
  • The first printing of this edition, complete with $4.95 price.  Sadly, an ex-library, though the dust jacket is nicely unmarred.
• The Sound and the Fury  (1966)
  • 9th printing of this edition.  The listing of Lion in the Garden on the dust jacket means this is no earlier than 1968.  Has an SBN.
• Light in August  (1967)
  • Title clues would seem to indicate a Spring 1967 printing, but the price of $16.95 seems way too high.  An oddity.  Has an SBN.
• Requiem for a Nun  (1967)
  • Not listed in the Carl Petersen Collection, so the original printing date is a best guess.  7th printing of this edition, seemingly from Spring 1967.  Has an SBN.

The red Random House hardcovers.

Random House  (red hardcover)

These were a special four volume set called the Literary Guild edition printed in 1970.  They are a matching set and all of them were issued without dust jackets.  This was one of the first additions when I first started making this a collection, as I had come across all four volumes at work.  This is a set that is consistently overpriced online.  The quality isn’t that great (they are essentially Book Club editions), there are no dust jackets and they are not rare at all – there are lots of copies out there, even of all four volumes together.

• The Sound and the Fury
• As I Lay Dying
• Sanctuary
• Light in August

The white Vintage mass markets.

Vintage  (the white mass markets)

These are the first paperback editions of Faulkner books actually issued by Random House (Vintage is the paperback wing of Random House).  I will quote from The Carl Petersen Collection: “After Alfred Knopf became associated with Random House, the Vintage paperback line replaced Modern Library paperbacks.  More recently most Faulkner titles in the Modern Library hardbound series have been absorbed into the Vintage format.”  Most of these titles have the same covers as the hardcover dust jackets then being published by Random House, with The Town and Three Famous Short Novels being exceptions.  I have no explanation for how they decided which titles to print in this series, although it does seem that every novel that Random House had rights to (thus, not including Soldiers’ Pay and Mosquitoes) sometime during the 1960’s was printed in the white uniform in some format – either in the Modern Library, the Random House hardcovers or the Vintage mass markets.  It is easy to determine which ones were never printed because in the black mass markets (below) they are listed as being the first Vintage edition.  But there are titles that were definitely in the hardcover series that weren’t printed in this series (Sartoris, Light in August, Pylon, Absalom Absalom) and I don’t know why.  The one title I don’t have is Faulkner at West Point, which was V-485 and seems to be much more rare (no one on LibraryThing has it either); like Faulkner in the University, it didn’t quite match the other books.  I am putting them in catalog # order because the date on them is difficult to determine with precision.  The date listed after the title is the first date listed in the Carl Petersen Collection.  Below that I list what date I think my specific copy is based on clues.  Those clues are the price, the titles listed on the back of the book and the presence of an SBN.  These were the first Vintage titles to get SBN’s (they predate the ISBN) and they all begin with 39470, followed by the catalog number, then the check digit (if they have SBN’s, which began in 1965 but weren’t always used until after 1970.

• The Sound and the Fury  (1961)
  • V-5.  The CPC lists this as 1963, but they also list a price of $1.45.  My copy can’t pre-date 1964 because it lists Faulkner at West Point on the back, yet it is priced $1.25, so I’m not certain.  It can’t be any later than 1965 because it still lists The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying together in the Modern Library.  It lists 7 titles from Vintage.  The 1961 version of The Sound and the Fury is actually the pictorial cover that was carried over from the Modern Library paperback series.  It was in 1963 when it changed to the white uniform cover.
• The Hamlet  (1961)
  • V-139.  This copy is from 1968.  It is priced $1.95 and lists 12 titles from Vintage.  This was originally the pictorial cover from the Modern Library paperback and it may not have used the white uniform cover until later in the decade.
• Three Famous Short Novels  (1961)
  • V-149.  It has an SBN making it probably later than The Hamlet and lists 12 titles from Vintage.
• The Town  (1961)
  • V-184.  It has an SBN and 12 titles from Vintage and is priced $2.95.  Like Three Famous Short Novels, doesn’t have the standard plain front cover, but instead has a design by Harold Bruder.  Perhaps these mark these two as later versions?  But if there’s a version with the standard cover I haven’t seen it and no one on LibraryThing has it.
• As I Lay Dying  (1964)
  • V-254.  Same back as Hamlet, priced $1.65, no SBN, so probably around 1968.
• The Wild Palms  (1964)
  • V-262.  $1.65.  This can be definitively dated from Spring of 1967 because of the presence of As I Lay Dying on the Modern Library Faulkner list on the back cover but no mention of Pylon (see this).
• Faulkner in the University  (1965, Feb)
  • V-269.  1st Edition of this book.  Confirmed by Modern Library (no listing of A Fable) and Vintage listing (6 other books, this one not listed).  This should be in the picture but isn’t because the spine is so different (as is the cover).
• The Mansion  (1965)
  • V-282.  Also from Spring of 1967 – same back cover as Wild Palms.
• The Reivers  (1966)
  • V-339.  Probably dates from 1970 or 1971 based on price ($2.45) and presence of SBN.
• The Unvanquished  (1967)
  • V-351.  Another Spring of 1967 – same back cover as Wild Palms.
• Sanctuary  (1967)
  • V-382.  According to the CPC, the first Vintage Edition sates it and is from February of 1967.  This must have been a quick reprint thereafter because it does not have the stated First Vintage Edition, but it has the Spring of 1967 markers from above.

The black Vintage mass markets.

Vintage (the black mass markets)

Starting in 1972, it would appear, Vintage redesigned the Faulkner mass markets.  To that end, they dropped the white covers and brought out new editions, with black spines and with a cover photograph on each.  There are a few books that stand out as significantly different from the rest.  The first, obviously, is the three trade editions that you can see in on the far right of the photograph.  Presumably the two story collections were done in trade because of size.  Perhaps Letters was done that way because it was its first appearance in paperback?  And then there are the three books that aren’t actually black on the spine – Wild Palms, A Fable and Collected Stories.  I have no idea why those ones are different.  Because there aren’t as many clues as to specific printing dates, I am mostly listing these by when they were first printed in the series, beginning with all the ones that were carried over from the white mass markets but with new jackets.  All of these either have SBNs or ISBNs, depending on when the specific copy is from (though the copies with an SBN on the cover have an ISBN in the book).  Three of them you may note (Three Famous Short Novels, Wild Palms, Requiem for a Nun), don’t have a V-number on the side.  Those three are much later copies with a barcode on the book and an ISBN.  A note about the catalog numbers.  Clearly, given the original release date in the white mass markets, the books were numbered as they were released.  But here we have books that are numbered way out of order.  I don’t know if Vintage recycled certain numbers or did something different or what.  There are also inconsistencies on titles – some of them list fewer Faulkner titles on the back than on the front.  Three of these books were appearing in paperback for the first time, as they were published in this era: Flags in the Dust, Selected Letters and Uncollected Stories.  This added every book that Random House had the rights to to its paperback editions except for two – Pylon, which would be released in the next set of mass markets and Big Woods, which would come with the gold trade editions.  Because several of these titles (Three Famous Short Novels, The Town, The Mansion) wouldn’t get another edition until 2012, some of these editions remained the in-print U.S. edition for 40 years.

• The Sound and the Fury  (1972)  –  V-5
• The Hamlet  (1972)  –  V-139
• Three Famous Short Novels  (1972)  –  V-149
• The Town  (1972)  –  V-184
• As I Lay Dying  (1972)  –  V-254
• The Wild Palms  (1972)  –  V-262
• The Mansion  (1972)  –  V-282
• The Reivers  (1972)  –  V-339
• The Unvanquished  (1972)  –  V-351
• Sanctuary  (1972)  –  V-381
• Light in August  (1972, Jan)  –  V-189
• Absalom, Absalom!  (1972, Aug)  –  V-780
• Intruder in the Dust  (1972, Aug)  –  V-792
• Go Down, Moses  (1973, Apr)  –  V-884
• Flags in the Dust  (1974, Oct)  –  V-239
• Requiem for a Nun  (1975, Apr)  –  V-412
• Collected Stories of William Faulkner  (1977, Feb)  –  V-257
• A Fable  (1978, Jan)  –  V-413
• Selected Letters of William Faulkner  (1978, Feb)  –  V-505
• Knight’s Gambit  (1978, Oct)  –  V-729
• Uncollected Stories of William Faulkner  (1981, Feb)  –  V-656

The Corrected Text biege Vintage mass markets.

Vintage  (the biege mass markets)

These are the books I began with.  I don’t know if we were required to buy this specific copy of The Sound and the Fury when we were reading it for AP English but this was the copy that I bought.  It worked conveniently that my sister had a copy of Light in August in the matching format (which I took – it has her S stamp on the inside of it).  So I started buying these books.  These were the first six Faulkner books I ever owned and the first six that I read.  And these are still the ones I go back to the most.  I love the look of them and I love the illustrations on the front – not only because I like them, but because (and this is important) because they are relevant to the individual books.  That’s kind of a rarity for Faulkner.  But these six illustrations actually all make sense for the books.

These are possibly my favorite Faulkner covers.

All six of these were printed in February of 1987 and they all have ISBNs, and though they are not labelled with V numbers, the ISBNs seem to give them V numbers of 741, 743, 744, 745, 774 and 775 (742 is a Susan Sontag novel).  It wasn’t actually until I was working on this project that it finally occurred to me why these six books are in this set and no others and it was as I was writing the previous sentence that I realized why two of the books are numbered differently.  See, by 1987, these were the only six books that had been given a Corrected Text.  It was the four novels that had appeared in the first Library of America volume, covering 1930-1935 (though why they are numbered in reverse chronological order I don’t know) and those are the first four.  The other two are the two books that had actually been published separately with Corrected Texts: The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom!.  It is an interesting mix though, since it takes Faulkner’s most highly regarded and well-known novels and happens to pair them with one of his least well-regarded and least well-known novels.  But it’s still my favorite set, even with only six books.

• The Sound and the Fury
• As I Lay Dying
• Sanctury
• Light in August
• Pylon
• Absalom, Absalom!

The complete set of the gold Vintage books.

Vintage  (the gold trade papers)

In the early 1990’s, Vintage started issuing the Faulkner collection in trade editions.  Technically these are called the Vintage International Library – the spine design (black border at the top and bottom, title, then author with one solid color) matches other books in the series, though Faulkner is a rarity in that the color remains the same (unlike other authors in the series like say Murakami, Nabokov or Roth).  All the covers have his name set above the title (in script) with a pictorial cover below that.  These stayed in print in this format far longer than almost any author in the series, finally being replaced in 2012.  I have listed them in publication order, though the ISBNs for Moses and Absalom are earlier than the first three books and the ISBN for Intruder is earlier than Hamlet and Unvanquished.  The ISBNs for this series were not done as a large group, though some of them are grouped together (the first three, the next two, the next three,  and then Reivers and Jerusalem – though I’m not sure why since they were released three years apart with two books in between) before separating entirely and the final two are after Vintage stopped using 0679.  Because of the Corrected Text editions of The Sound and the Fury and Absalom and the Library of America books, all of the first seven titles listed use the Corrected Text except Moses.  All titles from Jerusalem forward list it as the title in the front list of titles rather than Wild Palms – the other titles do not though many of them list it in the back.  There were several titles in the Vintage Faulkner oeuvre that never appeared in this series – Pylon, Knight’s Gambit, Three Famous Short Novels or any of the post-Nobel Prize novels except The Reivers.  They all continued to stay in print in the black mass markets through this period.

Several of the covers from the Vintage International editions.

• The Sound and the Fury  (1990, Oct)
• As I Lay Dying  (1990, Oct)
• Light in August  (1990, Oct)
• Go Down, Moses  (1990, Nov)
• Absalom, Absalom!  (1990, Nov)
• The Unvanquished  (1991, Oct)
• The Hamlet  (1991, Oct)
• Intruder in the Dust  (1991, Nov)
• The Reivers  (1992, Sep)
• Sanctuary  (1993, Dec)
• Big Woods  (1994, May)
• If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem [The Wild Palms]  (1995, Nov)
• Collected Stories of William Faulkner  (1995, Nov)
• Uncollected Stories of William Faulkner  (1997, Sep)
• A Summer of Faulkner  (2005, May)
  • This was an Oprah’s Book Club selection.  It includes As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury and Light in August (in that order – the suggested reading order, one for each month.  It comes in a slipcase with a little Reader’s Guide.  The text inside is the same.  The cover is similar except for two differences – on the rear cover there is no ISBN bar code or price (because they weren’t for sale separately though there is the original ISBN inside) and on the spine, there was a picture of Faulkner formed by the three volumes (meaning you had to keep them in the reading order).

The new Vintage trade edition of Faulkner’s works.

Vintage  (the new trade papers)

Last year, after years of publishing the gold Vintage trades, Random House gave Faulkner a redesign.  The new books have a colored spine with the title in white above black, with Faulkner in white.  The front covers have a picture on the top half, Faulkner’s name in a black box in the middle and and the title in script at the bottom while the back now has a picture and bio of Faulkner.  This appears to have begun at least in August of 2011 because that’s what Intruder in the Dust has as a date, though I did not see them until early in 2012.

The spines of the new Vintage versions.

These are the first set of books in which Vintage has printed their entire catalog of Faulkner in the same set.  The white mass markets had missed a lot of titles, the black mass markets didn’t have Pylon or Big Woods and the gold trade papers were missing quite a lot.  But now, everything that Vintage has in print is appearing in this new set.  Of course, rather annoyingly, I haven’t gotten many of them yet.  The four other than Intruder are the exact same inside as the gold copies, even with the same date and First Vintage International Edition and include Selected Letters on the title list.  Intruder in the Dust uses the Corrected Text for the first time and is printed Second Vintage International Edition, August 2011.  It has a new biography in the front and a new title list, this time chronological rather than alphabetical.  That list includes The Marble Faun, These 13, A Green Bough, Doctor Martino and Notes on a Horse Thief, but does not include Selected Letters (now out of print) or Three Short Novels; it lists Flags in the Dust with Sartoris in 1929 and so the only posthumous title listed is Uncollected Stories.  This set is the first time that the following books have appeared in the U.S. in trade paper editions: Pylon, Knight’s Gambit, Requiem for a Nun, A Fable, The Town, Three Famous Short Novels, The Mansion, Flags in the Dust.

• The Sound and the Fury
• As I Lay Dying
• Absalom, Absalom!
• Intruder in the Dust
• The Collected Stories of William Faulkner

My Chatto & Windus Faulkner books.

Chatto & Windus

Chatto & Windus was the longtime U.K. publisher of Faulkner, dating all the way back to the first publication of Soldiers’ Pay in the U.K. in 1930.  The books are listed in order of publication of each individual copy.  What are not listed (or pictured) and appear below, are those titles which appeared as part of the Uniform Edition, beginning in 1952.

• A Fable  (1955)
  • 1st U.K. Edition with no dust jacket
• Pylon  (1955)
  • Missing from the Petersen Collection, so it doesn’t indicate if this was supposed to be part of the Uniform Edition, but it matches the copy of Soldiers’ Pay below.
• Soldiers’ Pay  (1957)
  • The Carl Petersen Collection (see below) lists the 1957 as part of the Uniform Edition, and the binding matches, but the dust jacket doesn’t.  A book club jacket?  A mismatched jacket?  No idea.
• Requiem for a Nun  (1957)
  • 3rd impression of the U.K. edition.
• These Thirteen  (1958)
  • Volume II of Collected Short Stories  –  likely part of Uniform Edition
• The Hamlet  (1958)
  • Likely part of the Uniform Edition, but impossible to tell for certain without a dust jacket
• The Town  (1958)
  • 1st U.K. Edition in a badly torn dust jacket
• Dr. Martino and Other Stories  (1959)
  • Volume III of Collected Short Stories – includes “Barn Burning” and “Lo!” rather than “The Hound” and “Smoke”  –  likely part of Uniform Edition
• The Unvanquished  (1960)
  • Probably Uniform Edition – it is the same binding, but it has no dust jacket
• Knight’s Gambit  (1960)
  • 3rd U.K. Edition with no dust jacket
• The Mansion  (1961)
  • 1st U.K. Edition with no dust jacket
• The Reivers  (1962)
  • 3rd impression of the U.K. edition, printed in November of 1962, which showed that sales were good.
• Mosquitoes  (1964)
  • 1st U.K. Edition
• Essays, Speeches and Public Letters  (1967)
  • 1st U.K. Edition

The Uniform Edition from Chatto & Windus, which isn’t very uniform.

Chatto & Windus Uniform Edition

I’ll quote here from the The Carl Peterson Collection: “The Chatto and Windus Uniform Edition of Faulkner started to appear in 1952.  All volumes were bound in blue cloth and stamped in gold.  Through 1957 all volumes were issued in maroon on white dust jackets.  In 1960 Absalom, Absalom!, The Unvanquished and Go Down, Moses were marked “Uniform Edition” and bore different dust jackets, white printed in deep blue and ochre, designed by John Woodcock.  From 1965 through 1967 the Woodcock design was adapted to blue and tan.  Titles reprinted in that period were designated the “Collected Works” edition.”  Given this information, this makes me think that my copy of The Hamlet (above – 1957) is also from this set.  But “Uniform Edition” was only printed on the dust jacket, so without the jacket, it is impossible to tell.  Also the same for both volumes that I have from his Collected Short Stories (1959 – also above).  In addition to the volumes listed below (and the ones I just discussed), at the very least there are versions of Light in August (1952), The Sound and the Fury (1954), Soldiers’ Pay (1957) and Absalom Absalom (1960) that I don’t have.  Annoyingly, they aren’t actually very uniform.  It seems, at the very least, I have the later version dust jackets of As I Lay Dying and Intruder, though they were printed the same year as Wild Palms.  And I don’t know why Go Down Moses and Intruder in the Dust are so much bigger.  Clearly, the only one I have from the Collected Edition, that second series, is my other copy of Go Down Moses.  They are listed in the order of when they were printed.

• The Unvanquished  (1960)
• Go Down, Moses  (1960)
• Sanctuary  (1961)
• As I Lay Dying  (1962)
• The Wild Palms  (1962)
• Intruder in the Dust  (1962)
• Go Down, Moses  (1974)

All of my Faulkner books printed by Penguin – all originally from the U.K..

Penguin

If you find a book by Faulkner that is printed by Penguin you can pretty much tell that it is a British edition (with a couple of exceptions – see Signet above).  Penguin has never had the rights to print Faulkner in the States and most of these books bear the legend “Not For Sale in the U.S.A. or Canada” (though who knows what will happen now with the impending merger of Penguin and Random House).  But Penguin has long been the U.K. paperback publisher of Faulkner.  Indeed, some of the books on the far left are some of the oldest paperback copies of Faulkner books available.  In the descriptions up above they are broken down into Penguin – orange, Penguin Modern Classics – green, Penguin Modern Classics – orange and Penguin Modern Classics – orange trade.  Those go across the picture from left to right.  There will be a forthcoming Penguin Classics post that will go more in depth on the Penguins.  A brief note – like the Vintage mass markets, I mention the price, since it is relative to the date.  But I don’t understand British currency and have no idea what these prices mean.  These are listed in publication order.

The following three books are the original Orange design, with a Penguin on the lower front, a white band across the center of the book and a large penguin at the base of the spine, just above the catalog number.

• Soldiers’ Pay  (1938)
  • Catalog #123.  This is the 1st Penguin Edition and the 1st U.K. paperback edition.  Priced at 6d. net.  Comes with an outside wrapper.  The back lists all Penguin Books complete to January, 1938.
• Sanctuary  (1953)
  • Catalog #899.  1st Penguin Edition and 1st U.K. paperback edition.  The Carl Petersen Collection describes the text as “sanitized.”  Priced at 2/-.
• The Unvanquished  (1955)
  • Catalog #1058.  1st Penguin Edition and 1st U.K. paperback edition.  Priced at 4/- with a sticker over the original price, which must be 2/6 according to the Petersen Collection.

The next three books are the second Orange design.  This time the Penguin is in a small circle on the right and the white band runs down the center of the book rather than across and Faulkner’s initials are on the front of the book.  They clearly decided to add several books at once, because in the back of Light in August are listings for Intruder in the Dust (1432) and Requiem for a Nun (1435).

• Light in August  (1960)
  • Catalog #1433.  1st Penguin Edition and 1st U.K. paperback edition.  Priced at 5/-.
• Go Down, Moses  (1960)
  • Catalog #1434.  1st Penguin Edition and 1st U.K. paperback edition.  Has a 5/6 sticker over the original price.  Printed as Go Down, Moses and Other Stories on the title page.
• The Wild Palms  (1961)
  • Catalog #1630.  1st Penguin Edition and 1st U.K. paperback edition.  Not listed in Carl Petersen Collection.  Priced at 5/6.
• Soldiers’ Pay  (1964)
  • Catalog #123.  1964 printing, though I have two copies with different prices (4/6 and 7/- which seems quite different).  These mention As I Lay Dying as now being available (which was added in 1963).  It has a pictorial cover (by André François) and the spine is all orange.
• The Unvanquished  (1965)
  • Catalog #1058.  1965 printing.  The spine and cover are now white.  Priced at 6/-.  First listing of The Sound and the Fury as available from Penguin (added in 1964).  Also a pictorial cover by André François.

Penguin Modern Classics  –  green

The following 10 books were all printed in the 1970’s.  They appear to be the complete run of Faulkner that was being printed by Penguin at the time of the start of the series (1970, it would appear); they simply took all of their Faulkner books and decided they were Modern Classics.  But Absalom and Reivers would be both be added in 1976 (I have neither).  This appeared to be the format that Penguin would use (light olive green covers with pictorial designs inside a black border on the front, Penguin on spine above author in white and title in black) through 1980 before switching to orange again in the 1980’s.  All of them use an SBN (9 digit) except for the last three which use the ISBN.  They all begin with the Penguin standard 01400, followed by the catalog # from above and the check digit.  The prices begin at 25 p 5/- all the way up to £1.25 at the end.

• As I Lay Dying  (1970)
• Light in August  (1970)
• The Wild Palms  (1970)
• Intruder in the Dust  (1970)
• The Sound and the Fury  (1975)
• The Unvanquished  (1975)
• Soldiers’ Pay  (1976)
• Requiem for a Nun  (1976)
• Go Down, Moses  (1977)
• Sanctuary  (1980)

Penguin Modern Classics  –  orange

I can’t complain about Penguin re-using their ISBNs since Random House has done the same (how appropriate that they should be merging).  These titles use the exact same ISBNs as the above books.  These are the new orange versions of the Penguin Modern Classics.  The spine is orange at the top and bottom and white where the author and title are.  The cover would be white, with a Penguin symbol in orange and a pictorial cover in a box below the title.  The first four titles were all printed in 1982 but they are all trade copies, whereas the last two are mass markets and printed the same or later.  I can’t figure it out.  The sizes are the only difference in the books  Prices range from £1.95 to £2.95.

• Soldiers’ Pay  (1982)
• The Unvanquished  (1982)
• The Wild Palms  (1982)
• Intruder in the Dust  (1982)
• The Sound and the Fury  (1982)
• Light in August  (1983)
• The Penguin Collected Stories of William Faulkner  (1985)
  • I don’t know at what point that Penguin stopped printing Faulkner (Vintage U.K. now prints him in paperback).  But they threw in this – it’s essentially the Collected Stories, but retitled The Penguin Collected Stories of William Faulkner.  A page in the back lists the same 12 titles as above in the Modern Classics as also being available from Penguin.  They did apparently print a version of this book with a green cover.

The three Book of the Month Club Faulkner books.

Book of the Month Club

These were published in 1997 by the Book of the Month Club.  As such, they carry no ISBN and were not readily sold in stores (though I remember them from working at Barnes and Noble coming in as remainders).  I am not certain how they decided which three books to publish – that they left out As I Lay Dying seems strange.  They are a nice looking matching trio, though how they decided to use pictures of an older Faulkner when the latest of these books was published when he was 35 is beyond me.  This was one of the first sets I added to the collection.

• The Sound and the Fury
• Sanctuary
• Light in August

“The past is never dead.  It’s not even past.”  –  Requiem for a Nun