50 free William Faulkner trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This William Faulkner trivia quiz covers the Mississippi novelist who built an entire fictional county and won the Nobel Prize for it. The easy questions are the ones any literature student knows: his home town, the name of his apocryphal county, the Shakespeare line behind The Sound and the Fury, and the year of his Nobel Prize. From there it moves into the life: the great-grandfather who was a Confederate colonel, the Canadian air-force stint in which he never flew, the typo that added a 'u' to his name, the post office he quit in style, and the Hollywood years with Howard Hawks. The harder end is for people who have read the novels more than once: the fifteen narrators of As I Lay Dying, the boy who says his mother is a fish, the 1,288-word sentence that made the Guinness Book, the map he drew for Absalom, Absalom!, the novel he called a potboiler, the outline written on his office wall at Rowan Oak, the Pulitzer jury that was overruled, and how his daughter found out about the Nobel. It also covers his complicated record on race and civil rights. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on Faulkner, his novels, his stories and his home before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our Ernest Hemingway, American literature and Nobel Prize quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which Mississippi town was Faulkner born in 1897?
New Albany
The family moved to Oxford in 1902 when he was four, and he lived there most of his life.
Q 02Faulkner's fictional Yoknapatawpha County is a stand-in for which real Mississippi county?
Lafayette
He called it his apocryphal county; its seat, Jefferson, is a renamed Oxford.
Q 03In what year was Faulkner awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature?
1949
It was actually presented at the 1950 banquet alongside Bertrand Russell's prize.
Q 04Which two Faulkner novels won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction?
A Fable and The Reivers
He is one of only four authors to win the fiction Pulitzer more than once.
Q 05How did William Clark Falkner, Faulkner's great-grandfather and a Confederate colonel, die?
Murdered by a business partner
He had been tried and acquitted twice on murder charges himself.
Q 06Faulkner never graduated from high school. Which grades did he repeat?
Eleventh and twelfth
He had skipped second grade but grew withdrawn and truant.
Q 07Which older Oxford friend with Yale and Ole Miss degrees mentored the teenage Faulkner?
Phil Stone
Through him Faulkner met Robert Frost and Ezra Pound on a 1918 trip to Yale.
Q 08Which service did Faulkner join in 1918, using a forged letter of reference?
The Royal Air Force (Canada)
He trained in Toronto, never flew, and came home telling false war stories with a faked wound.
Q 09How did the family name Falkner acquire its 'u'?
A careless typesetter's error
Asked if he wanted it corrected, he supposedly said 'Either way suits me.'
Q 10What grade did Faulkner receive in English at the University of Mississippi?
D
He joined Sigma Alpha Epsilon, skipped classes and dropped out after three semesters.
Q 11From which job did Faulkner resign, refusing to be at the beck and call of anyone with two cents?
Postmaster
He had been the Ole Miss postmaster.
Q 12In which city did Faulkner write his first novel, Soldiers' Pay, in 1925?
New Orleans
He shared a French Quarter apartment with artist William Spratling.
Q 13Which established writer helped get Faulkner's first two novels published?
Sherwood Anderson
Faulkner and Spratling later parodied him in Sherwood Anderson and Other Famous Creoles.
Q 21In As I Lay Dying, which child famously declares that his mother is a fish?
Vardaman
The Bundrens carry Addie's coffin by wagon to bury her in Jefferson.
Q 22From which epic does the title As I Lay Dying come?
The Odyssey
Agamemnon speaks the words in Hades in Homer's poem.
Q 23Which 1931 Temple Drake novel was Faulkner's commercial breakthrough, one he supposedly called a potboiler?
Sanctuary
It inspired No Orchids for Miss Blandish and two film adaptations.
Q 24What did Faulkner name the house he bought in 1930 and lived in until his death?
Q 14Faulkner's first Yoknapatawpha novel was published in 1929, heavily cut, under what title?
Sartoris
His original title Flags in the Dust was restored in a 1973 edition.
Q 15From which Shakespeare play does the title The Sound and the Fury come?
Macbeth
It is from the tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Q 16Which family is at the centre of The Sound and the Fury?
The Compsons
The novel follows Quentin, Benjy, Jason and Caddy over mostly a single weekend in 1928.
Q 17Whose perspective opens The Sound and the Fury?
Benjy's
Benjy Compson is intellectually disabled, and the section jumps through time without warning.
Q 18How did The Sound and the Fury begin life?
As three short stories about the Compson children
Faulkner said he shut the door on all publishers and thought: Now I can write.
Q 19Where was Faulkner working night shifts when he began As I Lay Dying in 1929?
The university power house
It was published in 1930 and entered the public domain in 2026.
Q 20How many different narrators tell As I Lay Dying?
15
They speak across 59 chapters, one of them famously just five words long.
Rowan Oak
He named it after the rowan of Scotland and the live oak, though neither grows on the property.
Q 25What did Faulkner write directly on the walls of his office at home?
The outline of A Fable
The house has been owned by the University of Mississippi since 1972 and is open to the public.
Q 26Which studio hired Faulkner as a screenwriter in 1932, prompting his move to Culver City?
MGM
He arrived hoping to write Mickey Mouse cartoons, not realising Disney made them.
Q 27Which director became Faulkner's friend and frequent Hollywood collaborator?
Howard Hawks
They bonded over drinking and hunting, and Hawks's brother became Faulkner's agent.
Q 28To Have and Have Not, adapted by Faulkner from a Hemingway novel, is unique for what reason?
The only film with contributions by two Nobel laureates
It was Lauren Bacall's first film with Humphrey Bogart.
Q 29Which Raymond Chandler novel did Faulkner help adapt for the screen?
The Big Sleep
Bogart and Bacall starred again.
Q 30At which Hollywood restaurant was Faulkner said to go behind the bar to mix his own mint juleps?
Musso & Frank Grill
He lived a vagrant hotel life, including stints at the Garden of Allah.