The 2024 keepsake celebrates William Faulkner’s Rowan Oak.
In 1930, William Faulkner purchased an unoccupied home, The Bailey Place, a primitive Greek revival house on four acres of hardwood and cedar. The original owner was Colonel Robert Sheegog, an Irish immigrant enslaver from Tennessee who had the home built in 1844. The Bailey family purchased the property in 1872 and occupied it until 1923. A newly married Faulkner bought it in 1930, then renamed it Rowan Oak after two trees: the rowan tree of Scotland, a symbol of peace and security, and the live oak of America, a symbol of strength and solitude. Neither tree has grown on the property.
Soon after, he optioned the surrounding acreage (Bailey Woods) and settled in with his wife, Estelle, and her two children from a previous marriage, Malcolm and Victoria. Within a few years, their daughter Jill was born. Rowan Oak was the family home of the Faulkners until 1962 when William Faulkner passed. In 1972, Jill Faulkner Summers sold the house to The University of Mississippi to secure it as a house museum dedicated to her father and his work.
Rowan Oak was William Faulkner’s private world, in reality, and imagination. Inspired by the property’s history, Faulkner wrote stories of Native Americans, runaway enslaved people, old colonels, and spinsters who gave porcelain painting lessons. He combined these local histories with his memories of coming of age in a South torn between traditional ways and modern development. William Faulkner was his most productive at Rowan Oak, where he ultimately won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949 and the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award in 1954 for A Fable.
William Faulkner’s Rowan Oak
To purchase a 2024 Keepsake from The University of Mississippi Museum and Historic Houses you may visit the UM Museum Store. To order a keepsake for shipping, please call UM Museum Store at 662-915-7073. Hours are Tuesday-Friday 10am-5pm and Saturday 10am-4pm. Each 2023 ornament is $25 and can be shipped within the contiguous United States for $10. Sales tax is required for all sales shipped within Mississippi.
Are you a member of the UM Museum? Members receive a 10% discount on all Museum Store purchases, including keepsakes! Please visit museum.olemiss.edu/join-the-museum for more information!
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