Thirteen stories deal with small town southern life, love, betrayal, murder, and arson. Faulkner was a master of the short story. Most of the stories in this collection are drawn from the greatest period in his writing life, the fifteen or so years beginning in 1929, when he published the Sound and the Fury. They deal with many of the themes found in the novels and with the subjects and characters of small town Mississippi life that are uniquely Faulkner's....

"The Mansion completes Faulkner's great trilogy of the Snopes family in mythical Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, which also includes The Hamlet and The Town. Beginning with the murder of Jack Houston, and ending with the murder of Flem Snopes, it traces the downfall of this indomitable postbellum family, who managed to seize control of the town of Jefferson within a generation."--P. [4] of cover.

These three full-length novels compose the Snopes trilogy. In "The Hamlet," the cunning Flem Snopes is introduced with other members of his conniving family. Flem's dream is to marry Eula Varner and remake the small world of Frenchman's Bend as his own personal kingdom. In "The Town," Flem sets his sights on the county seat of Yoknapatawpha County, Jefferson, in a ruthless bid for even more power. Finally, in "The Mansion," Mink Snopes brings down...

Offers forty-six stories, including twenty that were incorporated into longer works after magazine publication, eleven that appeared in periodicals, and fifteen never published at all.