‘Where Faulkner Was Happy’: William Faulkner Abroad, at Home and at UVA

The letters were believed to be missing until they were rediscovered in 2013 at the Faulkner family farm just outside of Charlottesville. They offer rare insight to the writer’s personal life at a key moment in his career: It was in Paris that Faulkner learned that his first novel, “Soldier’s Pay,” had been accepted for publication. The correspondence shows just how formative his time in Europe was to the novels, short fiction and screenplays he would later write.

“We don’t have any surviving diaries, so the letters we do have are so important,” said Elizabeth Nosari, the Faulkner processing archivist at Special Collections who is creating a new finding aid to enhance research access for the William Faulkner Collection. The research guide will put dozens of entries on Faulkner in one place, making it easier for researchers to find and use these primary sources.

“They show him being the real Faulkner, speaking to loved ones and friends. It’s the closest we can get to who he was as a person,” Nosari said.

Faulkner told his mother, with urgency and excitement, about what he was writing. “I have just written such a beautiful thing that I am about to bust – 2,000 words about the Luxembourg gardens and death.” Those 2,000 words would become the ending of “Sanctuary.” 

He detailed his plans to take two years to complete his next novel, and described the night he wrote from 8:30 p.m. until past 1 a.m. in a frenzy. He even wrote of ordering a steak, well done, and fried potatoes for a relative, to the French waitstaff’s shock. When he decided to grow a beard, he warned his mother, “don’t faint,” and drew self-portraits to update her as it became longer. He thought it made him look “distinguished.”

The letters enhance the Faulkner holdings at the University, already the world’s largest collection, which includes a first draft manuscript of “The Sound and the Fury,” a first-grade report card and illustrations the author created of himself in his Royal Air Force uniform.

UVA began collecting Faulkner materials in 1959, a year after Faulkner left his position as writer-in-residence and became a consultant on contemporary literature at the library, and then Balch Lecturer in American Literature. UVA’s Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities hosts “Digital Yoknapatawpha,” which explores Faulkner’s fictional world of Yoknapatawpha County. The site, created by Stephen Railton, emeritus professor of English, recently received its millionth visitor.

During his time as writer in residence, Faulkner published “The Town” and began writing “The Mansion,” and spoke to at least 37 different audiences. In his own telling, “Faulkner was happy,” at UVA and in Albemarle County.

One highlight of the Faulkner collection is a handwritten manuscript for “The Sound and the Fury.” The first page, titled “Twilight,” references a short story that outgrew itself and became the first section of the novel. It includes annotations the author made as he edited himself.

Before Faulkner was a novelist, he wrote poetry. UVA has one of his early efforts, a collection of 14 love poems to his childhood sweetheart, Estelle Oldham, called “Vision in Spring.” He even tried his hand at playwriting with “The Marionettes: A Play In One Act.” The bound volume, one of six handmade by Faulkner, is written in his distinctive script, with art deco-styled illustrations (Faulkner also wanted to be a visual artist as a young man). That special script was just one of the ways Faulkner stylized not only his work, but himself.

“He cultivated an image, wearing these nicely tailored tweed jackets and smoking a pipe. I think he was conscious of his persona and legacy,” Nosari said.

UVA also has one of the writer’s tweed jackets, as well as a pipe – plus a photo of the writer smoking the pipe in the Academical Village. Many of the materials were donated by Linton R. Massey, a friend of Faulkner’s who established a fund to maintain and acquire materials for the Library’s collection.

“We’ve been cultivating and developing our William Faulkner Collection for a really long time now,” Nosari said. “It’s one of the most significant collections at Special Collections and the largest Faulkner collection there is.”