William Faulkner, The Wild Palms

Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University)

Ed. by Stephen E. Meats, Pittsburg State University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.3: American (US) Writing and Culture: The Early Twentieth-century , 1900-1945.
Vol. editors: J. Michael Duvall (College of Charleston), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Tony Papanikolas (San Jose State University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1939

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

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The Wild Palms

(New York: Random House), published 19 January 1939, was the eleventh of Faulkner’s nineteen novels and one of only five that are not set in Jefferson, Yoknapatawpha County, the apocryphal Mississippi town and county he created for most of his fiction.

Publication History and Composition

Publication History and Composition

Faulkner originally titled the novel, If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem, borrowing a phrase from Psalm 137:5: “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.” His editors objected to the title because, according to Blotner, they were “afraid it would hurt the book’s sales by arousing anti-Semitic feeling” (399). A more likely reason for their reluctance, however, was that three years earlier Faulkner had published Absalom,

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5783 words

Citation: Meats, Stephen E.. "The Wild Palms". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 19 January 2024 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=8163, accessed 16 May 2024.]

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