William Faulkner’s
Letters and Correspondence

To Ernest Hemingway
28 June 1947

Dear Hemingway:

I'm sorry of this damn stupid thing. I was just making $250.00, I thought informally, not for publication, or I would have insisted on looking at the stuff before it was released. I have believed for years that the human voice has caused all human ills and I thought I had broken myself of talking. Maybe this will be my valedictory lesson.

I hope it wont matter a damn to you. But if or when or whever [sic] it does, please accept another squirm from your truly.

(A letter Faulkner wrote to Hemingway following the publication of remarks Faulkner made to a literature class that Hemingway lacked "courage" in his writing.)

Faulkner’s private correspondence has been collected in several books, including the following:

The Faulkner-Cowley File: Letters and Memories, 1944-1962. Edited by Malcolm Cowley. Viking, 1966.

Selected Letters of William Faulkner. Edited by Joseph Blotner. Random House, 1977.

Thinking of Home: William Faulkner’s Letters to His Mother and Father, 1918-1925. Edited by James G. Watson. Norton, 2000.

Books for sale at

Thinking of Home: William Faulkner's Letters to His Mother and Father, 1918-1925 Thinking of Home: William Faulkner’s Letters to His Mother and Father, 1918-1925

Edited by James G. Watson

W.W. Norton, 2000

ISBN: 0393321231

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How to cite this page (MLA style):

Padgett, John B. “William Faulkner’s Letters and Correspondence.” William Faulkner on the Web. 17 August 2006. 06 July 2024 <http://www.mcsr.olemiss.edu/~egjbp/faulkner/lib_letters.html>.