"Dry September" is a short story by
William Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulkner (; September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where Faulkner spent most of ...
. Published in 1931, it describes a lynch mob forming (despite ambiguous evidence) on a hot September evening to avenge an alleged (and unspecified) insult or attack upon a white woman by a black watchman, Will Mayes. Told in five parts, the story includes the perspective of the rumored female victim, Miss Minnie Cooper, and of the mob's leader, John McLendon. It is one of Faulkner's shorter stories.
It was originally published in ''
Scribner's
Charles Scribner's Sons, or simply Scribner's or Scribner, is an American publisher based in New York City, known for publishing American authors including Henry James, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kurt Vonnegut, Marjorie Kinnan Rawli ...
'' magazine, and later appeared in collections of his short stories.
It includes an appearance by Hawkshaw, the barber who was the focus of Faulkner's later story, "Hair".
External links
Full text of "Dry September" courtesy of the
New Bulgarian University
New Bulgarian University ( bg, Нов български университет, also known and abbreviated as НБУ, NBU) is a private university based in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. Its campus is in the western district of the city, known ...
"Dry September" at Digital Yoknapatawpha
1931 short stories
Short stories by William Faulkner
Works originally published in Scribner's Magazine
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