Sartoris

The novel that invented Yoknapatawpha County. The story where Faulkner found his world.

William Faulkner’s first novel, set in his fictional Mississippi county, is a story of family, honor, and the slow, painful death of the Old South—and the men who cannot let it go.

The Sartoris family has ruled the town of Jefferson for generations. They are proud, reckless, and doomed. Young Bayard Sartoris returns from World War I, scarred by the death of his twin brother. He cannot settle down. He drives too fast. He drinks too much. He courts a woman he does not love and pushes away the one he does. He is trying to kill himself, slowly, without admitting it. Around him, the old order crumbles: his grandfather, old Bayard, tries to hold the family together; his great-aunt Virginia, the family matriarch, watches with bitter wisdom; and the town of Jefferson itself, newly modern, newly indifferent, waits for the Sartorises to fade away.

This is Faulkner at his most elegiac and foundational: a novel about the burden of history, the impossibility of living up to the past, and the terrible beauty of a family that knows it is dying. Sartoris is where Faulkner’s greatest creation—Yoknapatawpha County—was born.

• Published in 1929, Faulkner’s fourth novel and the first set in Yoknapatawpha County

• A shorter version was published in 1927 as Flags in the Dust; Sartoris is the revised edition

• Introduces the Sartoris family, the Compson family, and the town of Jefferson, all of which would reappear in Faulkner’s later masterpieces

Available in multiple formats:

• Paperback & Hardcover: Beautifully designed print editions presenting the complete, unabridged text made to last.

• Ebook: DRM-free EPUB compatible with Kindle, Kobo, Apple Books, and all major e-readers.

• Audiobook: Professionally narrated, complete and unabridged, available on all major audiobook platforms.

A beautifully crafted edition for your shelf, your device, or your ears—or the perfect gift for anyone who knows that the past is never dead. It is not even past.

About the Author

William Faulkner (1897–1962) was an American novelist and short story writer, widely regarded as one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. Born in New Albany, Mississippi, he spent most of his life in Oxford, Mississippi, the model for his fictional Yoknapatawpha County. Sartoris was his fourth novel, written after Soldiers’ Pay (1926), Mosquitoes (1927), and the original version of Sartoris, titled Flags in the Dust, which was heavily cut by his publisher. Faulkner was so discouraged by the cuts that he did not write another novel for nearly two years. When he returned, he wrote The Sound and the Fury (1929), one of the great masterpieces of American literature. Sartoris is now recognized as the novel where Faulkner found his subject—the history, the land, and the people of Yoknapatawpha County—which he would explore for the rest of his career. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949 and the Pulitzer Prize twice. He died of a heart attack in 1962.