Exhibits
Exhibit compiled by: Jennifer Ford*, Rachel Hudson^, Bill Griffith^, Stan Whitehorn*, Sarah Katherine Glass*, Michelle Emanuel*
(* University of Mississippi Libraries; ^ University of Mississippi Museum)
Shortly after William Faulkner’s death in the summer of 1962, Joseph Blotner, his early biographer, was allowed extraordinary access to the late author’s library at his home, Rowan Oak. Blotner cataloged each volume in the collection and his work was published in 1964 by the University of Virginia Press. [William Faulkner's Library, a Catalogue / Compiled with an introduction by Joseph Blotner (1964)] According to this publication, there were approximately twelve hundred books in Faulkner’s library at the time of his death. Many of these works were gifted to the author by admirers, including several well-known literary figures. The library also contained books collected by Faulkner, as well as volumes he inherited from various family members. There were also several copies of Faulkner’s own publications.
The William Faulkner Digital Library Project is an ever-expanding online reconstruction of the author’s 1962 library, involving the collaborative work and collections of William Faulkner's Rowan Oak and the University Libraries' Department of Archives & Special Collections. The project includes innovative technology, scholarly essays, detailed descriptions of each book, as well as several other features intended to provide researchers with additional insight into Faulkner's literary world.
William Faulkner’s Barrister Bookcase: The Material Object and a Library
Faulkner’s paternal grandfather, John Wesley Thompson (J.W.T.) Falkner (note the lack of a “u”), was a Mississippi attorney and businessman. The section of the bookcase featured here was likely inherited by William Faulkner from his grandfather and used in the Rowan Oak Library by the author at various times. The barrister case is a perfect example of a physical object created to house the book as a material presence, capturing an essential part of the William Faulkner Digital Library Project. Featured in the case are several book jacket facsimiles of volumes held in the Rowan Oak Library, which are a part of the digital project. Although not from the collections of Rowan Oak, the additional volumes on display feature authors the Nobel Prize laureate frequently consulted, reading both for pleasure and inspiration.
Special Collections would like to thank Rowan Oak, its curators, and the University Museum for the loan of this section of Faulkner’s barrister case expressly for this exhibit.
For the exhibit, the barrister case has been filled with copies and facsimiles of books from Faulkner's collection, including: Murder Must Advertise / Dorothy L. Sayers, Ellery Queen's Anthology (1960, 1961, 1962), Mosquitoes / William Faulkner, Great Modern Short Stories, Sad Cypress / Agatha Christie, Absalom, Absalom! / William Faulkner, Shakespeare's Sonnets, Dickens' Works, The Golden Apples / Eudora Welty, Love in a Dry Season / Shelby Foote, Invisible Man / Ralph Ellison, A Good Man is Hard to Find / Flannery O'Connor, Lie Down in Darkness / William Styron, Light in August / William Faulkner, Youth / Joseph Conrad, Will o' the Mill / Robert Louis Stevenson, Life Studies / Robert Lowell, Saturday Review Reader, Short Story Masterpieces.
“Read, read, read. Read everything...”
In the spring of 1949, the University of Mississippi’s English Department invited William Faulkner to a series of informal classroom discussions, where students could ask the author various questions. During one of these sessions, an audience member posed a very familiar question to the Mississippi writer: “What is the best training for writing? Courses, experience, or what?” Faulkner immediately responded with this guidance:
Read, read, read. Read everything- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it….Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you’ll find out. If it is not, throw it out the window
As the Rowan Oak library reveals, Faulkner’s own reading habits were varied, from Shakespeare to the Old Testament to pulp fiction, and beyond. Faulkner was often quoted as saying that he re-read several authors each year, namely Joyce, Shakespeare, Conrad, as well as others.
One volume of particular note in the Rowan Oak library is a biography of musician George Gershwin, whose “Rhapsody in Blue,” was a particular favorite of Faulkner’s while writing Sanctuary. This book is likely the only known work signed by Faulkner remaining in the library, which makes it especially unique and of great importance to the digital project.
In the exhibit case, a facsimile of the inscription "To Bill, in memory of a good time and Rhapsody in Blue, A. J. Buttilla." as well as an illustration with the note "My Pal Bill, Milton Abenethy" dated "Chapel Hill, Oct. 30".
Faulkner’s Writing Sanctuary, Reading, and the William Faulkner Digital Library Project
In 1952, William Faulkner added “The Office” to Rowan Oak, and spent the last decade of his writing career typing away on a portable Underwood typewriter placed on a converted sewing machine table in this downstairs room. Although the artifacts showcased here are not the originals on display in his home, they capture the spirit of this space, where the author’s personal reading habits played such a pivotal role in his writing.
Faulkner’s Office contained numerous books during his time at Rowan Oak, with many remaining in the home after his death in 1962, as evidenced in the series of featured photographs. The William Faulkner Digital Library Project’s interactive photo timeline documents all of the home’s book spaces over a seventy-year timeframe--specifically the books housed in The Library, The Office, and Faulkner’s upstairs bedroom.
In the exhibit, a typewriter similar to the one in Faulkner's office has been placed with a similar lamp and tobacco tin as found in Faulkner's home at Rowan Oak.