William Faulkner

With a writer of Faulkner's scope and subtlety even the study of his beginnings is a challenging task. How did the young man who imitated Swinburne's verse and Beardsley's drawings develop into the author of The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom!? This book attempts one solution of the problem by focusing on the aspect of 'stylization' in Faulkner's earliest work and in his mature novels. The first comprehensive study of Faulkner's early graphic work, it sets his art nouveau illustrations and his affinities with the Arts and Crafts movement in their precise historical background, and goes on to offer new readings of his early poetry and his poetic play The Marionettes. By examining these ephemeral and apprentice works in detail, Professor Hönnighausen is able to show how the painstaking efforts of the young poet, calligrapher and illustrator foreshadow the verbal art of his great poetic novels.