Sherwood Anderson and Other Famous Creoles

By William Spratling and William Faulkner

A treasury of literary history featuring caricatures of bohemian life in 1920s New Orleans with captions by William Faulkner.

After meeting in the French Quarter, Nobel Prize–winning novelist William Faulkner and renowned silver artist William Spratling shared a house together—and collaborated on a parody volume that offered a witty portrait of the creative denizens of the city, a group that included such future icons as publisher and Broadway producer Horace Liveright, Pulitzer-winning biographer Carl Van Doren,; novelist John Dos Passos, actress and screenwriter Anita Loos, and others. This unique book provides both an enjoyable glimpse into the early lives of prominent literary and artistic figures and a snapshot of New Orleans history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Release date: Jan 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781504068154

William Spratling

William Spratling was an American silver designer and artist, best known for his influence on twentieth-century Mexican silver design. He accepted a position as an instructor at Tulane University’s School of Architecture in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1921. At the same time, he was an active participant in the Arts and Crafts Club and taught in the New Orleans Art School. Spratling roomed with author William Faulkner during his time in New Orleans, and the two famously collaborated on Sherwood Anderson and Other Famous Creoles, which depicted the bohemian atmosphere of artists and writers like themselves living and working in the French Quarter in the 1920s.

Book preview

Sherwood Anderson and Other Famous Creoles

William Spratling and William Faulkner

CONTENTS

Chronicle of a Friendship by William Spratling

Sherwood Anderson and Other Famous Creoles

William Spratling’s Mexican World by Robert David Duncan

Chronicle of a Friendship: William Faulkner in New Orleans

When Bill Faulkner came to New Orleans he was a skinny little guy, three years older than I, and was not taken very seriously except by a few of us.

I was living just back of the cathedral then, with a heavy teaching schedule in architecture at Tulane. Writing and drawing for the architectural magazines, plus constant special design jobs for many of the architects in the city brought my slight income at the university up to a level which permitted me an apartment in the French Quarter, the services of a slatternly but glorious cook named Leonore, and abundant liquor for all comers, in spite of prohibition. Those were the days!

A half-block away was the Petite Theatre and nearby were Sherwood and Elizabeth Anderson in the Pontalba to one side of the cathedral front. We were a little spoiled because when visitors came they had to come downtown; we rarely visited uptown.

Elizabeth Prall had been running a Doubleday bookstore in New York, where she was eventually discovered by Sherwood. Like many authors, the young Sherwood, browsing in bookstores, liked to be recognized. They married and came to New Orleans.

Previously, among extra help taken on for Christmas sales, Elizabeth Anderson had employed a young man from Mississippi named William Faulkner, who had been recommended to her by another Mississippian, Stark Young, of So Red the Rose.

Later the same young man wrote from Oxford, Mississippi, to Miss Elizabeth in New Orleans. It seems he planned to visit them and then he shortly appeared on the scene. His visit was pleasant enough for a few days, though shortly Sherwood became a little irked at the situation. He said, Look, our friend Bill Spratling has an extra room there in Pirates Alley. Why don’t you just move over there with him? So Faulkner did,