Faulkner said in 1932 when speaking about his one act play, The Marionettes, “I wrote a play by that name once. It was never printed. I made and bound six copies by hand. I signed none of them.” In fact, Faulkner signed three of these copies on the title page, and the fourth existing copy bears his signature on the final illustration.

The Marionettes manuscripts are fully handmade objects written on standard x leaves, folded once across the width, and sewn into a single gathering. They are bound in a folio of black and white. The illustrations are colorless and formal, and Faulkner’s text is stylized. The Marionettes manuscripts were written, decorated, and bound by Faulkner.

As with Marionettes, the consummate artist Faulkner shows in his later works an aesthete’s obsession with a book’s appearance. Faulkner asked the publisher of The Marble Faun (1924) to print its cover in pale green with straw-colored labels on the spine, and in 1929, Faulkner told Ben Wasson that he was unhappy with the quality of The Sound and The Fury saying it was “a most dull and poorly articulated picture to the eye,” and that he wished publishing was advanced enough for the first section to be printed using different colored inks to indicate time shifts.

As color has meaning for Faulkner in these instances, the costumes of the characters in Marionettes convey a fin de siècle sensuality or a French Symbolist mood. By what means Faulkner came to the style of his illustrations in the play has been a subject of debate. It is likely British artist Aubrey Beardsley influenced him. The Ole Miss student newspaper, The Mississippian, reported that Faulkner “had been in New York City for some time studying [graphic] art.” He may have had the chance to become familiar with Beardsley’s art while there. Faulkner’s border design for the poem “Nocturne” in the 1921 Ole Miss yearbook imitates Beardsley’s manner of art nouveau illustration, as does the alluring nature of his dark-haired, draped, and elongated Marietta. Faulkner’s drawings seem inspired by Beardsley’s decadent Salome illustrations, as seen in Faulkner’s depiction of Pierrot at the table, a wine glass toppled, his arm at his side in a drunken sleep.

Four handmade copies of The Marionettes have survived: two at the University of Texas, one (shown) at The University of Mississippi, and one at the University of Virginia. The manuscripts present variations in Faulkner’s illustrations and text. The first Texas copy and Virginia copy illustrations vary in the drawing of Pierrot (center left). Faulkner dedicated the second Texas copy to his future wife, Estelle Oldham Franklin’s, first daughter, Victoria (far left). The Mississippi copy has the final illustration of Pierrott and Marietta with Faulkner’s signature (right).