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The first visualizations of Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha fictions were the illustrations drawn to accompany the publication of his short stories in magazines like The Saturday Evening Post, Scribner's and Collier's, the large circulation periodicals that Faulkner regularly submitted work to in his quest for income. Although Faulkner occasionally worked directly with the magazines' editors to revise a story, there is no evidence that he had any control over - or even interest in - the way these magazines illustrated his texts. The illustrations can, however, help us appreciate the way Faulkner's world, and the people of different races and classes who inhabit it, appeared to his original readers.

The following items are drawn from the William Faulkner Foundation Collection at the University of Virginia's Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library (http://small.library.virginia.edu/).
Click on any image to see an enlargement.




“Monk”

Scribner's decision to illustrate Faulkner's grim story of innocence and punishment with "Accompanying Drawings of Southern Types by Howard Cook" says, or at least suggests a lot about the way "the South" (and the fiction Faulkner set there) may have existed in the national imagination in the 1930s. Cook's "types" have no relationship to the characters in the story. Cook himself was a well-known print-maker and magazine illustrator from Springfield, Massachusetts.

Page 17, May 1937 Scribner's     Page 20, May 1937 Scribner's     Page 21, May 1937 Scribner's     Page 23, May 1937 Scribner's

      Citing this source:
Stephen Railton, "Illustrating 'Monk,'" Digital Yoknapatawpha, University of Virginia, http://faulkner.drupal.shanti.virginia.edu/node/16329?canvas   (Date added to project: 2018)
Illustrations © Scribner's Magazine.