William Faulkner was born on September 25, 1897, and began to write poetry as a teenager. He was an indifferent student, and dropped out of high school when he was fifteen. A preeminent figure in twentieth-century American literature, Faulkner created a profound and complex body of work in which he often explored exploitation and corruption in the American South.William Faulkner was a prolific writer who became very famous during his lifetime, but who shied away from the spotlight as much as possible. He is remembered as both a gentlemanly Southern eccentric and an arrogant, snobbish alcoholic. William Faulkner is better known as a novelist though he wrote more than seventy short stories and as such his short stories deserve study in themselves. Six volumes of his short stories were published during his lifetime. Even in isolation from his novels, Faulkner's short fiction provides the complete chronological development of Yoknapatawpha from the coming of white men, who introduced the concept of private property, up to the twentieth century, when the automobile became a common fixture in American society. In 1950, Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. This award effectively turned his career around, bringing him the economic success that had so long eluded him. However, most critics find the works he wrote after winning the prize largely disappointing, especially compared to his earlier, mythical works.