William Faulkner was a Nobel and multi-Pulitzer Prize-winning American writer of The Sound and the Fury, Intruder in the Dust, The Reivers, Big Woods, The Wild Palms, and As I Lay Dying.

Full or original name at birth: William Cuthbert Falkner*

Date, time and place of birth: September 25, 1897, at 11:00 p.m., New Albany, Mississippi, U.S.A.

Date, time, place and cause of death: July 6, 1962, at 1:30 a.m., Wright's Sanitarium, Byhalia, Mississippi, U.S.A.** (Heart attack)

* He was not born "William Faulkner" as a few sources report. He was born "William Cuthbert Falkner" then later added the "u" to his last name as an adult.

** Faulkner did not die in Oxford, Mississippi as most sources erroneously state. Oxford certainly is where he lived and spent most of his life, but he died more than 60 miles away at Wright's Sanitarium, in Byhalia, Mississippi.


All of the following publications, in some past editions, have offered an erroneous place of death for William Faulkner.

Americana Encyclopedia Annual

Britannica Book of the Year 1963

Collier's Encyclopedia

Compton's Encyclopedia

Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedia Yearbook 1962

Obituaries from The Times 1961-1970


It is not our intent to denigrate these fine publications, but merely to point out the above inaccuracy to prevent further dissemination of the erroneous data.

The most in-depth of more than three dozen sources consulted in preparing this profile, was the 1989 biography, William Faulkner: American Writer, by Dr. Frederick R. Karl.

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