Sartoris is a novel, first published in 1929, by the American author
William Faulkner. It portrays the decay of the
Mississippi aristocracy following the social upheaval of the
American Civil War. The 1929 edition is an abridged version of Faulkner's original work. The full text was published in 1973 as
Flags in the Dust. Faulkner's great-grandfather
William Clark Falkner, himself a
colonel in the
American Civil War, served as the model for Colonel John Sartoris. Faulkner also fashioned other characters in the book on local people from his hometown
Oxford. His friend Ben Wasson was the model for Horace Benbow, while Faulkner's brother Murry served as the antetype for young Bayard Sartoris.