William Styron: 20 books

In 1950, at the age of twenty-four, William Clark Styron, Jr., wrote to his mentor, Professor William Blackburn of Duke University. The young writer was struggling with his first novel, Lie Down in Darkness, and he was nervous about whether his “strain and toil” would amount to anything. “When...

A vital, illuminating collection of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner’s elegant, passionately engaged nonfiction   My Generation is the definitive gathering of William Styron’s nonfiction, exposing the core of this greatly gifted, highly convivial, and profoundly serious artist...

“I’ve finally pretty much decided what to write next—a novel based on Nat Turner’s rebellion,” twenty-six-year-old William Styron confided to his father in a letter he wrote on May 1, 1952. Styron would not publish his Pulitzer Prize–winning The Confessions of Nat Turner until 1967, but...

  “Styron’s most impressive performance. . . . Belongs on that small shelf reserved for American masterpieces.” —Washington Post Book World   Winner of the 1980 National Book Award, Sophie’s Choice is William Styron’s classic novel of love, survival, and regret,...

From 1947 to 1949, William Styron twice attempted to write a novel under the working title Inheritance of Night. On the third attempt he produced the award-winning Lie Down in Darkness, which when published in September 1951 established him as one of the most promising writers of his generation. Duke...

“Thoughtful, candid” essays from the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Sophie’s Choice (The Christian Science Monitor). This Quiet Dust is a compilation of William Styron’s nonfiction writings that confront significant moral questions with precision and vigor. He examines topics...

William Styron’s stunning debut: a classic portrait of one Southern family’s tragic spiral into destruction First published to wide critical acclaim in 1951, Lie Down in Darkness centers on the Loftis family—Milton and Helen and their daughters, Peyton and Maudie. The story, told through...

The “magnificent” Pulitzer Prize–winning and #1 New York Times–bestselling novel about the preacher who led America’s bloodiest slave revolt (The New York Times). The Confessions of Nat Turner is William Styron’s complex and richly drawn imagining of Nat Turner, the leader of the...

The New York Times–bestselling memoir of crippling depression and the struggle for recovery by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Sophie’s Choice. In the summer of 1985, William Styron became numbed by disaffection, apathy, and despair, unable to speak or walk while caught in the grip...

From the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Sophie’s Choice: three novellas of a young writer’s journey to adulthood. In Love Day, twenty-year-old Paul Whitehurst is a Marine lieutenant during World War II, waiting to land on Okinawa, wrestling with anxiety and memories of his boyhood...

After the great success in 1990 of Darkness Visible, his memoir of depression and recovery, William Styron wrote more frequently in an introspective, autobiographical mode. Havanas in Camelot brings together fourteen of his personal essays, including a reminiscence of his brief friendship with John...

The author of Sophie’s Choice, “the foremost writer of his generation,” portrays a rebellion by two marines on a miles-long march in the Carolina heat (The Wall Street Journal). In the shadow of the Korean War, a series of misfired mortar shells kill six men in a marine camp during a...

The Suicide Run collects five of William Styron’s meticulously rendered narratives based on his real-life experiences as a U.S. Marine. In “Blankenship,” Styron draws on his stint as a guard at a stateside military prison at the end of World War II. “Marriott, the Marine” and “The Suicide...

A New York Times bestseller by the author of Sophie’s Choice: Two Americans search for the truth about a mysterious long-ago murder in Italy.   Shortly after World War II, in the village of Sambuco, Italy, two men—Virginia attorney Peter Leverett and South Carolina artist Cass Kinsolving—crossed...