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As I Lay Dying
“A virtuosic piece, displaying everything that Faulkner has at his disposal…”
–E .L. Doctorow, The New York Review of Books
First published in 1930, As I Lay Dying traces the Bundren family’s difficult journey to fulfill the wish of their dying matriarch, Addie. Told through a sequence of interior monologues, the novel unfolds in multiple voices, revealing conflicting motives, private grief, and the uneasy bond that holds the family together. Faulkner’s style—fragmented, intimate, and unguarded—captures the texture of thought itself, shifting between dark humor and quiet despair. The result is a work that examines how people make meaning from obligation, death, and estrangement, and how language both connects and isolates them. Now regarded as a defining work of twentieth-century fiction, As I Lay Dying remains compelling for its precise attention to voice and its unsentimental view of human endurance.
This Warbler Classics edition includes an essay by Robert Merrill on reading As I Lay Dying as modern tragedy as well as a detailed biographical timeline.
William Faulkner (1897–1962) was an American novelist and short story writer renowned for his profound influence on modernist literature and his creation of the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, a richly detailed setting based on Lafayette County, Mississippi. Faulkner’s work often explored themes of the decay of the South, racial tensions, and complex family dynamics, as depicted in novels like The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930), and Absalom, Absalom! (1936). Faulkner earned the Nobel Prize in Literature, two Pulitzer Prizes, and the National Book Award. He spent much of his life in Oxford, Mississippi, where he wrote prolifically; he also worked as a screenwriter in Hollywood. His legacy endures as one of the most significant American writers of the twentieth century.
Robert Merrill is an emeritus professor of English at the University of Nevada, Reno, where he taught for thirty years and chaired for eleven. He is the author or editor of several books and has published more than fifty articles and reviews in such major journals as American Literature, Modern Philology, Modern Fiction Studies, Studies in American Fiction, Narrative, and Texas Studies in Literature and Language.
–E .L. Doctorow, The New York Review of Books
First published in 1930, As I Lay Dying traces the Bundren family’s difficult journey to fulfill the wish of their dying matriarch, Addie. Told through a sequence of interior monologues, the novel unfolds in multiple voices, revealing conflicting motives, private grief, and the uneasy bond that holds the family together. Faulkner’s style—fragmented, intimate, and unguarded—captures the texture of thought itself, shifting between dark humor and quiet despair. The result is a work that examines how people make meaning from obligation, death, and estrangement, and how language both connects and isolates them. Now regarded as a defining work of twentieth-century fiction, As I Lay Dying remains compelling for its precise attention to voice and its unsentimental view of human endurance.
This Warbler Classics edition includes an essay by Robert Merrill on reading As I Lay Dying as modern tragedy as well as a detailed biographical timeline.
William Faulkner (1897–1962) was an American novelist and short story writer renowned for his profound influence on modernist literature and his creation of the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, a richly detailed setting based on Lafayette County, Mississippi. Faulkner’s work often explored themes of the decay of the South, racial tensions, and complex family dynamics, as depicted in novels like The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930), and Absalom, Absalom! (1936). Faulkner earned the Nobel Prize in Literature, two Pulitzer Prizes, and the National Book Award. He spent much of his life in Oxford, Mississippi, where he wrote prolifically; he also worked as a screenwriter in Hollywood. His legacy endures as one of the most significant American writers of the twentieth century.
Robert Merrill is an emeritus professor of English at the University of Nevada, Reno, where he taught for thirty years and chaired for eleven. He is the author or editor of several books and has published more than fifty articles and reviews in such major journals as American Literature, Modern Philology, Modern Fiction Studies, Studies in American Fiction, Narrative, and Texas Studies in Literature and Language.
192 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 2, 2026
About the author
William Faulkner
1,453 books10.9k followersWilliam Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer. He is best known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, a stand-in for Lafayette County where he spent most of his life. A Nobel laureate, Faulkner is one of the most celebrated writers of American literature and often is considered the greatest writer of Southern literature.
Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi, and raised in Oxford, Mississippi. During World War I, he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force, but did not serve in combat. Returning to Oxford, he attended the University of Mississippi for three semesters before dropping out. He moved to New Orleans, where he wrote his first novel Soldiers' Pay (1925). He went back to Oxford and wrote Sartoris (1927), his first work set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County. In 1929, he published The Sound and the Fury. The following year, he wrote As I Lay Dying. Later that decade, he wrote Light in August, Absalom, Absalom! and The Wild Palms. He also worked as a screenwriter, contributing to Howard Hawks's To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep, adapted from Raymond Chandler's novel. The former film, adapted from Ernest Hemingway's novel, is the only film with contributions by two Nobel laureates.
Faulkner's reputation grew following publication of Malcolm Cowley's The Portable Faulkner, and he was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature for "his powerful and unique contribution to the modern American novel." He is the only Mississippi-born Nobel laureate. Two of his works, A Fable (1954) and The Reivers (1962), won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Faulkner died from a heart attack on July 6, 1962, following a fall from his horse the month before. Ralph Ellison called him "the greatest artist the South has produced".
Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi, and raised in Oxford, Mississippi. During World War I, he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force, but did not serve in combat. Returning to Oxford, he attended the University of Mississippi for three semesters before dropping out. He moved to New Orleans, where he wrote his first novel Soldiers' Pay (1925). He went back to Oxford and wrote Sartoris (1927), his first work set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County. In 1929, he published The Sound and the Fury. The following year, he wrote As I Lay Dying. Later that decade, he wrote Light in August, Absalom, Absalom! and The Wild Palms. He also worked as a screenwriter, contributing to Howard Hawks's To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep, adapted from Raymond Chandler's novel. The former film, adapted from Ernest Hemingway's novel, is the only film with contributions by two Nobel laureates.
Faulkner's reputation grew following publication of Malcolm Cowley's The Portable Faulkner, and he was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature for "his powerful and unique contribution to the modern American novel." He is the only Mississippi-born Nobel laureate. Two of his works, A Fable (1954) and The Reivers (1962), won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Faulkner died from a heart attack on July 6, 1962, following a fall from his horse the month before. Ralph Ellison called him "the greatest artist the South has produced".
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