Magazine Illustrations

The first visualizations of Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha fictions were the illustrations drawn to accompany the publication of his short stories in magazines like The Saturday Evening Post, Scribner's and Collier's, the large circulation periodicals that Faulkner regularly submitted work to in his quest for income. Although Faulkner occasionally worked directly with the magazines' editors to revise a story, there is no evidence that he had any control over - or even interest in - the way these magazines illustrated his texts. The illustrations can, however, help us appreciate the way Faulkner's world, and the people of different races and classes who inhabit it, appeared to his original readers.

The following items are drawn from the William Faulkner Foundation Collection at the University of Virginia's Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library (http://small.library.virginia.edu/).
Click on any image to see an enlargement.

The headnote Collier's supplied to this story refers to it as "Dark business below Memphis," which locates it both geographically and racially for the magazine's national and white readership. The illustrations that William Meade Prince drew for it emphasize the same kinds of primitivism, i.e. rural and black.

   

      Citing this source:
Stephen Railton, "Illustrating 'A Point of Law,'" Digital Yoknapatawpha, University of Virginia, http://faulkner.drupal.shanti.virginia.edu/node/16324?canvas   (Date added to project: 2018)
Illustrations © Collier's Magazine.