Faulkner, William

Carbon typescript of the short story "Knight's Gambit," 22 pages including Harold Ober cover sheet (11 x 8 5/8 in.; 278 x 218 mm, with three-hole punch in left margin), annotations in an unidentified hand on cover sheet, [Oxford, Mississippi, early 1941]; minor nicks at upper edge of last leaf.

Blotner, Faulkner: A Biography (1984 ed.), pp. 435

Condition as described in catalogue
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Faulkner's 1941 short story, which would later be expanded into a novella and become  the title story of his collection of Yoknapatawpha County mysteries.  Faulkner completed this story in early 1941, reviving the character of Gavin Stevens, who was based on his long-time Oxford friend and mentor, Phil Stone.  He sent the story to agent Harold Ober, only to have it rejected by Harper's Magazine in 1942.  The magazine cited "obscurity and complexity" as their reasons for turning it down. He tried to revise the story, but soon abandoned it.  He did not take it up again till 1948, when he expanded it into a novella.  The next year, he gathered five previously published Gavin Stevens stories and added the novella, all of which he referred to as "who-done-its."  Knight's Gambit  was published by Random House in November 1949.

Faulkner would later write of the story, "It is a love story in which Stevens prevents a crime (murder) not for justice but to gain (he is now fifty plus) the childhood sweetheart which he lost 20 years ago."  Annotations in two unidentified hands on the cover sheet read, "Retire" and "This story became the title story in book Knight's Gambit."