"Tomorrow" (Text Key 1336)

A lesser-known story in Faulkner’s oeuvre, "Tomorrow" was first published on Nov. 23, 1940, in the Saturday Evening Post. The magazine bought the short story for $1000. The story was later included in Knight’s Gambit, a short collection of mystery tales that also included "Smoke," "Monk," "Hand Upon the Waters," "An Error in Chemistry," and the title novella, "Knight’s Gambit." Though the stories in Knight’s Gambit were written and published at various times in the 1930s and 1940s, Random House published the stories together in 1949, the year for which Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Like the rest of the stories in Knight’s Gambit, "Tomorrow" features Gavin Stevens, the wise county attorney of Yoknapatwpha. In this story, Stevens and his nephew Chick Mallison travel the county to uncover the mystery of the hung jury at the Bookwright trial. Our digital representation of "Tomorrow" and its pagination refer to the version of the story published in the Vintage International paperback Knight’s Gambit (2011).