In his third novel, Flags in the Dust, Faulkner created a mythological Mississippi county and named it Yoknapatawpha (Yawknaw-puh-toff-uh), with its county seat in Jefferson. This particular novel, however, was not published during Faulkner's lifetime; it appeared posthumously in 1973. What did appear in 1929 was a heavily edited and much shorter version of Flags in the Dust, renamed Sartoris to emphasize the importance of one of the county's major families, the Sartorises.
The county of Yoknapatawpha and its county seat of Jefferson are based on the real county of Jefferson, Mississippi, and its county seat of Oxford. The name "Yoknapatawpha" is derived from authentic Native American names found on old maps of Jefferson County. In 1936, Faulkner drew a map of his fictional county, showing where various scenes from his novels and short stories take place, and he first included the map in Absalom, Absalom!, published that same year. The creation of this mythological county is one of modern literature's greatest feats.
Many of Faulkner's same characters are found in his various novels; a character who appears in a minor role in one novel might reappear as a significant character in another. For example, a Snopes appears briefly in the first novel of the Yoknapatawpha series, and Faulkner comments that this Snopes is one of an inexhaustible number of Snopeses who have invaded the county. Later in his career, the Snopes family becomes the subject of three different novels and many short stories. His other characters appear and reappear in varying roles, and, therefore, in reading more than one of his novels or short stories, we come to know a great deal about the diverse people who inhabit Yoknapatawpha County.
