The "Chronology" included in the appendices of the Vintage International paperback edition of Absalom, Absalom! is the last of three different chronologies. The earliest is the two-page manuscript version that Faulkner prepared in the summer of 1936 in response to his publisher's concerns about the complexity of the novel. The next is the Chronology that Random House published on pages 380-381 of the first edition (1936), and then subsequently reprinted in the Modern Library edition (1951); this revises the handwritten version in a number of ways. Both Faulkner's manuscript and the published chronology contained several obvious errors, most notably dating the novel's present in September and December, 1910. For this reason, when Noel Polk prepared his "Corrected Text" of Absalom in 1986 for the Library of America, he also "corrected" the Chronology "in several instances to agree with the dates and facts of the novel." After that date the various editions published by Random House and its subsidiary, Vintage International, all adopt Polk's revisions.

The table below allows you to see the differences between these three chronologies, and to compare them with the dates Digital Yoknapatawpha uses for the same set of events. The Ms column is Faulkner's manuscript version. RH: the first edition version (New York: Random House, 1936). VI: the Vintage International version (New York, 1990). And DY lists our dates, which in the case of these events agrees with Polk's revisions. When there is a substantive difference in the way a version describes the event, that is also noted.

  *Both Faulkner's and Polk's chronologies say Wash Jones moved into Sutpen's fishing camp before Wash's granddaughter was born, but the text says that he moved with the young girl: Sutpen gives Wash "permission" to live there "with the year-old grandchild" (149). So this event and the following one should be transposed.

  ** Our dating of Wash Jones moving into "the abandoned fishing camp" is based on that same passage on page 149: Sutpen "had given [Jones] permission fourteen years ago to squat in the abandoned fishing camp." These "fourteen years" are being dated either from Sutpen's return from the Civil War or his opening of the store, i.e. in either 1866 or 1867. 1866 minus 14 equals 1852, not 1850, as both Faulkner's and Polk's chronologies have it.

  *** Calculating from that passage on page 149 would also mean that Milly Jones (the "year-old grandchild") was born in 1851 or at the latest 1852. Two lines earlier, she is referred to as "a fifteen-year-old country girl" in 1867 (149). Being born in 1851 would make Milly 18 when she gives birth to Sutpen's daughter. When she is about to deliver, however, Wash calls her "a fifteen-year-old gal" (228), and the younger age seems more appropriate in view of the way Milly is described at this time. The most likely explanation for these discrepancies is that Faulkner simply forgot the detail that Milly was a year old when Wash moved into the camp and neglected to add a couple years to her age between the time when Sutpen begins courting her and the time when she gives birth.
     While these textual discrepancies are not major, they do provide an example of how we try to navigate Faulkner's inconsistencies while basing our dates on the text of the narrative.