William Faulkner

William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County, with Jefferson as its county seat, is both a mythical and actual place. Yoknapatawpha county is 2400 square miles in area and has a population of 15,611 persons. Jefferson has an actual jail, town square, old houses, and Old Frenchman's Place, even a railroad. Faulkner's 'Yoknapatawpha County' is in reality Lafayette County, and 'Jefferson' is actually Oxford. The Faulkner family lived there since before the Civil War. This is where most of his …

…Faulkner, accompanied by his daughter, went to Sweden. Many other awards followed, including Pulitzer prizes for The Town and The Reivers. Faulkner visited European countries, especially France, spent some weeks in Japan in 1955, and made occasional public appearances in the United States. In 1957, he was a writer in residence at the University of Virginia. Three weeks after being thrown from a horse, he died, from a heart attack, in Oxford, Mississippi. July 6, 1962. (American Writers; 57b)