The Sound and the Fury

In October 1928, the young writer William Faulkner tossed a recently completed manuscript to his friend and agent Ben Wasson: ‘Read this, Bud. It’s a real son-of-a-bitch … This one’s the greatest I’ll ever write.’ Twenty years and several great novels later, Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his ‘powerful and artistically unique contribution to the modern American Novel’. The Sound and the Fury – searing, tragic, extraordinary in its innovation – is the most powerful of all. Indeed, this novel had become one of the most influential in 20th-century American literature.
Faulkner knew that what made the book ‘a real son-of-a-bitch’ was what Wasson called ‘the sheer technical outrageousness and freshness of the Benjy section’. Faulkner wished to find a publisher whose attitude to printing matched the innovation of the writing – one prepared to print the novel in several colours. Nearly 100 years later, The Folio Society is fulfilling that vision with a new limited edition that is a landmark in literary publishing.