With a writer of Faulkner's scope and subtlety even the study of his
beginnings is a challenging task. How did the young man who imitated
Swinburne's verse and Beardsley's drawings develop into the author of
The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom!? This book attempts one
solution of the problem by focusing on the aspect of 'stylization' in
Faulkner's earliest work and in his mature novels. The first
comprehensive study of Faulkner's early graphic work, it sets his art
nouveau illustrations and his affinities with the Arts and Crafts
movement in their precise historical background, and goes on to offer
new readings of his early poetry and his poetic play The Marionettes. By
examining these ephemeral and apprentice works in detail, Professor
Hönnighausen is able to show how the painstaking efforts of the young
poet, calligrapher and illustrator foreshadow the verbal art of his
great poetic novels.