Faulkner and Love The Women Who Shaped His Art Judith L. Sensibar

This book is about the making of the writer William Faulkner. It is the first to inquire into the three most important women in his life - his black and white mothers, Caroline Barr and Maud Falkner, and the childhood friend who became his wife, Estelle Oldham. In this new exploration of Faulkner's creative process, Judith Sensibar discovers that these women's relationships with Faulkner were not simply close; they gave life to his imagination. Sensibar brings to the foreground, as Faulkner did, this 'female world', an approach unprecedented in Faulkner biography. Through extensive research in untapped biographical sources, including archival materials and interviews with the women's families and other members of the communities in which they lived, Sensibar transcends existing scholarship and reconnects Faulkner's biography to his work. She demonstrates how the themes of race, tormented love, and addiction that permeated his fiction had their origins in his three defining relationships with women. Sensibar alters and enriches our understanding not only of Faulkner, his art, and the complex world of the American South that came to life in his brilliant fiction, but also of darknesses, fears, and unspokens that Faulkner unveiled in the American psyche.

Judith L. Sensibar is the author of The Origins of Faulkner's Art and the winner of fellowships from the NEH and the ACLS.

"'A breakthrough account... An indispensable addition to Faulkner scholarship... Scrupulously documented, brilliantly insightful... one can easily see why these three essential women who touched him should be given more than attention' Alexander Theroux, Boston Globe 'drawing on new biographical data and personal documents, Sensibar has produced an in-depth and focused work of interest to Faulkner scholars.' Felicity D. Walsh, Library Journal"