Critical essays reflecting a variety of schools of criticism - Notes on the contributing critics, a chronology of the author's life, and an index - An introductory essay by Harold Bloom.

The first major novel by William Faulkner, published in 1929. The novel is set in Faulkner's fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Miss., in the early 20th century. It describes the decay and fall of the aristocratic Compson family, and, implicitly, of an entire social order, from four different points of view.