Rowan Oak, Faulkner's Home

This is Rowan Oak, the home of William Faulkner. The primitive Greek Revival house was built around eighteen forty-four for an Irish immigrant farmer named Robert Sheegog. By the time Faulkner bought it in nineteen thirty, it was falling apart, and he had little money. He restored it himself over the years, adding plumbing, electricity, brick terraces, and an office where he wrote on the walls.

He renamed the place Rowan Oak after the rowan tree of Scotland, an old symbol of peace and security, paired with the strength of the American oak. Curiously, neither tree grows on the grounds. Faulkner lived here for more than thirty years, writing much of the work that won him the Nobel Prize, until his death in nineteen sixty-two. His daughter later sold it to the University of Mississippi, which keeps it open today.