Long been recognized not only as one of William Faulkners greatest works, but also as the most accessible of his major novels.
This Norton Critical Edition is based on the 1985 corrected text and is accompanied by detailed explanatory annotations.Backgrounds and Contexts is divided into three sections, each of which includes a concise introduction by Michael Gorra that carefully frames the issues presented, with particular attention to As I Lay Dyings place in Faulkners literary life. Contemporary Reception reprints American, English, and French reviews by Clifton Fadiman, Henry Nash Smith, Edwin Muir, and Maurice Coindreau, among others, along with Valery Larbauds never-before-translated preface to the first French edition of the novel. The Writer and His Work examines Faulkners claim to have written the novel in six weeks without changing a word. It includes his comments on the books composition along with his later thoughts on and changing opinions of it, sample pages from the manuscript, his Nobel Prize address, and the little-known short story in which he first used the title. Cultural Context reprints an essay by Carson McCullers and an excerpt from James Agees Let Us Now Praise Famous Men along with other materials that address questions of Southern Agrarianism and the Southern grotesque.
Criticism begins with the editors introduction to As I Lay Dyings critical history and scholarly reception. Eleven major essays are provided by Olga W. Vickery, Cleanth Brooks, Calvin Bedient, Andr Bleikasten, Eric Sundquist, Stephen M. Ross, Doreen Fowler, Patrick ODonnell, Richard Gray, John Limon, and Donald M. Kartiganer.
A Chronology and a Selected Bibliography are also included.
