Black Lamb

A Week in Literary History

September 25th, 2002

American novelist William Faulkner (As I Lay Dying, 1930) is born William Falkner in New Albany, Miss., 1897.

William Faulkner, b. September 25, 1897, d. 1962

In one short burst during his early thirties Faulkner wrote the beginnings of six superb novels; then he finished them and went on to a thirty-year career of uniformly high quality. By the end of his life, as the most original and substantial American novelist of the twentieth century, winner of the Nobel and every other honor, he finally had the satisfaction of seeing his works widely published and praised.

Suggested Reading Novels Soldier’s Pay, 1926. Mosquitoes, 1927. Sartoris, 1929. The Sound and the Fury, 1929. As I Lay Dying, 1930. Sanctuary, 1931. Light in August, 1932. Pylon, 1935. Absalom, Absalom! 1936. The Wild Palms, 1939. The Hamlet, 1940. Go Down, Moses, 1942. Intruder in the Dust, 1948. Requiem for a Nun, 1951. A Fable, 1954. The Town, 1957. Short stories These Thirteen, 1931. Doctor Marino and Other Stories, 1934. The Unvanquished: Sartoris Stories, 1938. Knight’s Gambit, 1949. Collected Short Stories of William Faulkner, 1950.

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A Week in Literary History

September 12th, 2002

American writer H.L. (Henry Louis) Mencken (The American Language, 1919-48) is born in Baltimore in 1880.

H.L. Mencken, b. September 12, 1880, d. 1956

Perhaps no other writer has influenced the tone and style of American prose more than the Sage of Baltimore, the incomparable stylist and thinker who ruled literary America for twenty or thirty years early in the twentieth century. Decades later, his writing remains a model of vigorous, memorable, and original expression.

Suggested Reading Essays & studies George Bernard Shaw—His Plays, 1905. The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, 1908. A Book of Prefaces, 1917. In Defense of Women, 1918. Prejudices (in six series), 1919-1927. Notes on Democracy, 1926. Treatise on the Gods, 1930. Treatise on Right and Wrong, 1934. Generally Political, 1944. A Mencken Chrestomathy, 1949. Philology The American Language, 1919. Supplements, 1945-1950. Autobiography Happy Days, 1940. Newspaper Days, 1941. Heathen Days, 1943. Diary The Diary of H.L. Mencken, 1989.

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A Week in Literary History

September 4th, 2002

On September 4, American novelist Richard Wright (Native Son, 1940) is born in 1908 near Natchez, Miss.

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