Faulkner’s most famous, most popular, and most anthologized short story, “A Rose for Emily” evokes the terms Southern gothic and grotesque, two types of literature in which the general tone is one of gloom, terror, and understated violence. The story is Faulkner’s best example of these forms because it contains unimaginably dark images: a decaying mansion, a corpse, a murder, a mysterious servant who disappears, and, most horrible of all, necrophilia — an erotic or sexual attraction to corpses.
First published in the April 1930
Saturday Evening Post , “A Rose for Emily” was reprinted in
These Thirteen (1931), a collection of thirteen of Faulkner’s stories. It was later included in his
Collected Stories (1950) and in the
Selected Short Stories of William Faulkner (1961).