Faulkner's Genealogies

Faulkner created these charts between about 1940 and about 1960, while he was writing three different novels: Go Down, Moses, The Town and The Reivers. The links under each image will take you to resources where you can see enlarged and annotated versions of them and learn more about their place in the context of Faulkner's career.

This one page chart in Faulkner's handwriting is undated, but it seems to provide a record of the moment in his writing of Go Down, Moses when he decided to include the Beauchamp family on the McCaslin family tree. Those two "N"s - written backwards, in Faulkner's characteristic fashion - stands for "Negro."

SOURCE: William Faulkner Foundation Collection, 1918-1959, Small Special Collections,
University of Virginia Library. [Item Metadata: Chart 1 p. (1 R, 0 V) on 1 l.
MORE: Go Down, Moses: Manuscripts &c.

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In the various diagrams here, Faulkner is clearly trying to sort the Snopeses into specific branches on a family tree. They were probably made while he was writing The Town, as indicated by the fact that this page survives on the back of one of the pages on the typescript of that novel.

SOURCE: William Faulkner Foundation Collection, 1918-1959, Small Special Collections,
University of Virginia Library. [Item Metadata: 6074-a: THE TOWN. 154 miscellaneous typescript pages. 310 p. (170 R, 140 V) on 170 l. Slipcase.]
MORE: The Town: Manuscripts &c.

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The presence of the Priests on these two slightly different versions of the McCaslin family indicate that Faulkner created them while writing The Reivers, his last novel.

SOURCE: William Faulkner Foundation Collection, 1918-1959, Small Special Collections,
University of Virginia Library.
[Item Metadata: IA:13 GO DOWN, MOSES Chart 1 p. (1 R, 0 V) on 1 l.]
MORE: The Reivers: Manuscripts &c.