This Norton Critical Edition is based on the 1985 corrected text and is accompanied by detailed explanatory annotations. #xE2;#x80;#x9C;Backgrounds and Contexts#xE2;#x80;#x9D; is divided into three sections, each of which includes a concise introduction by Michael Gorra that carefully frames the issues presented, with particular attention to As I Lay Dying#xE2;#x80;#x99;s place in Faulkner#xE2;#x80;#x99;s literary life. #xE2;#x80;#x9C;Contemporary Reception#xE2;#x80;#x9D; reprints American, English, and French reviews by Clifton Fadiman, Henry Nash Smith, Edwin Muir, and Maurice Coindreau, among others, along with Valery Larbaud#xE2;#x80;#x99;s never-before-translated preface to the first French edition of the novel. #xE2;#x80;#x9C;The Writer and His Work#xE2;#x80;#x9D; examines Faulkner#xE2;#x80;#x99;s claim to have written the novel in six weeks without changing a word. It includes his comments on the book#xE2;#x80;#x99;s composition along with his later thoughts on and changing opinions of it, sample pages from the manuscript, his Nobel Prize address, and the little-known short story in which he first used the title. #xE2;#x80;#x9C;Cultural Context#xE2;#x80;#x9D; reprints an essay by Carson McCullers and an excerpt from James Agee#xE2;#x80;#x99;s Let Us Now Praise Famous Men along with other materials that address questions of Southern Agrarianism and the Southern grotesque. #xE2;#x80;#x9C;Criticism#xE2;#x80;#x9D; begins with the editor#xE2;#x80;#x99;s introduction to As I Lay Dying#xE2;#x80;#x99;s critical history and scholarly reception. Eleven major essays are provided by Olga W. Vickery, Cleanth Brooks, Calvin Bedient, Andr#xC3;#xA9; Bleikasten, Eric Sundquist, Stephen M. Ross, Doreen Fowler, Patrick O#xE2;#x80;#x99;Donnell, Richard Gray, John Limon, and Donald M. Kartiganer. A Chronology and a Selected Bibliography are also included.