William Faulkner, one of the great American novelists of the twentieth century, was also a screenwriter. The first of four brothers, he was born in New Albany, Mississippi, the son of Murry Cuthbert and Maud Butler Falkner. They were a prominent Mississippi family with interests in banking and the railroad. Faulkner's father became secretary and then business manager of the University of Mississippi in Oxford after a somewhat checkered vocational career that included working for the family railroad and running a livery stable. William Faulkner spent most of his life in the town of Oxford, Mississippi, where he went to high school through the eleventh grade. In 1918 his childhood sweetheart, Estelle Oldham, became engaged to an established lawyer after Faulkner refused to elope with her. He tried to join the U.S. Army Signal Corps, but was rejected. He enlisted in the Canadian RAF, but World War I ended before he finished his training.
