July 6, 1962 - William Faulkner (pictured in 1938) died of a heart attack this morning at Wright’s Sanatorium in Byhali, Mississippi. The author, who suffered a serious injury in a fall from his horse on June 17th which led to thrombosis, was 64 years old. In recent years, Mr. Faulkner had spent much of his time at the University of Virginia, where he was a lecturer on American literature. He and his wife returned last May to Oxford, Miss., a community of 8,000 that Mr. Faulkner had used as home base throughout his career. Mr. Faulkner won the Nobel Prize in 1949 for a series of novels in which he created his own Yoknapatawpha County in northern Mississippi. He won a Pulitzer prize for his 1954 novel, “A Fable,” and was awarded the National Book of Gold Medal in 1950 for his volume, “Collected Stories of William Faulkner.” His most famous novels were “Absalom, Absalom!”, “Sartoris,” “The Sound and the Fury,” “As I Lay Dying,” “Sanctuary,” and “Light in August,” and the trilogy “The Hamlet,” “The Town,” and “The Mansion.” In addition to his widow, Estelle, other survivors include his daughter, Mrs. Jill Summer of Charlottesville, Va., his brothers, John and Murray, and three grandchildren. His death followed by a little over a year the passing of another American literary giant — Ernest Hemingway, who died July 2, 1961.
