Faulkner's County: The Historical Roots of Yoknapatawpha

Fred W. Morrison Series in Southern Studies

by Don H. Doyle

Lafayette County, Mississippi, was the primary inspiration for what is arguably the most famous place in American William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County. Faulkner once explained that in his Yoknapatawpha stories he "sublimated the actual into the apocryphal." This history of Lafayette County reverses that notion, using Faulkner's rich fictional portrait of a place and its people to illuminate the past.

From the arrival of Europeans in Chickasaw Indian territory in 1540 to Faulkner's death in 1962, Don Doyle chronicles more than four centuries of local history. He traces the building of a permanent community and plantation economy by white settlers, the lives of slaves in the region, the experiences of secession, Civil War, and Reconstruction, town life in Oxford, and the "Revolt of the Rednecks" Faulkner captured in his saga of the Snopes clan.

Drawing on both history and literature, Doyle renders a rich and deeply researched portrait of Faulkner's home. "Yoknapatawpha was a place of the imagination, invented by Faulkner as a vehicle for developing a coherent body of fiction," Doyle writes, "but the raw materials from which he created this place and its people lay right at his front porch."

Genres: History

488 pages, Paperback

First published June 30, 2001

About the author

Don Harrison Doyle

Reviews

[Robbie Head · Rating 4 out of 5]

All Mississippians need to read this; it should be required reading to graduate from high school in this state. Just reading the first two chapters should be enough to end any moonlight and magnolia illusions lingering in your mind. Keep this in mind; Mississippi did not become a state until 1817; north Mississippi, including the land where Oxford is located, was not opened for settlement until the 1830s; the civil war started in 1861. Mississippi, as noted by James Street (who was popular novelist in the 1940s and was from south Mississippi, far removed from the mint julep crowd) was not settled by aristocrats; it was settled by get rich quick rednecks. As Sam Dabney, one of Street’s characters in his novel Taproots puts it, “There are not enough aristocrats in Mississippi to be pallbearers to a gnat’s ass.”

[Gerry Connolly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Faulkner’s County is the socio-economic and political history of Lafayette County, Mississippi which was the model for Yoknapatawpha County the fictional setting for many of William Faulkner’s 16 novels and several short stories. Don Doyle takes us from the original and displaced Chickasaw residents to the 1836 forced migration and replacement with white settlers and their slaves. Just 24 years later Lafayette embraced secession that led to occupation and economic decline that prevailed through the Depression. It’s racial history not to be addressed during Faulkner’s life. A powerful study of adversity and stubborn resistance to equality. Faulkner captured the contradictions in his writings.

[J M-B · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this, as a non-American, in preparation for reading some Faulkner. Not only is it a very useful introduction to themes and characters in Faulkner's fiction, it is also a really fine example of local history focusing on prominent individuals, economic developments as well as the military and political impacts of the national struggle as it swept through this area of Mississippi. I will be reading more by this author.

[Charles Walker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Obviously a good read for anybody interested in Faulkner - gives an encyclopedic context of the area which inspired his greatest writing. But it also functions quite well as a view of Southern history in microcosm, from the original settler invasions and expulsion of the Native Americans through the antebellum years and right up to the civil rights movement. Very informative, and written in a highly readable style.

[Quinn Wright · Rating 1 out of 5]

Just not an interesting topic for me. Southern history is too broad and interesting for such a narrow scope, and just not written in a very good style. Made it maybe 100 pages into it and left it behind. If you are a bigtime faulkner nerd could be a good fit, but otherwise there are probably better books on historical south.