Mosquitoes (novel)

Mosquitoes
First edition cover
AuthorWilliam Faulkner
LanguageEnglish
PublisherBoni & Liveright
Publication date
1927
Publication placeUnited States
Pages349 pages

Mosquitoes is a satiric novel by the American author William Faulkner. The book was first published in 1927 by the New York-based publishing house Boni & Liveright[1] and is the author's second novel. Sources conflict regarding whether Faulkner wrote Mosquitoes during his time living in Paris, beginning in 1925[2] or in Pascagoula, Mississippi in the summer of 1926.[3] It is, however, widely agreed upon that not only its setting, but also its content clearly reference Faulkner's personal involvement in the New Orleans creative community where he spent time before moving to France.[4]

The city of New Orleans and a yacht on Lake Pontchartrain are the two primary settings for the novel. Beginning and ending in the city, the story follows a diverse cast of artists, aesthetes, and adolescents as they embark on a four-day excursion aboard the motorized yacht, the Nausikaa, owned by a wealthy patron of the arts.

The novel is organized into six sections: a prologue which introduces the characters, four body sections each of which documents a day of the yacht trip hour-by-hour, and an epilogue which returns the characters, changed or unchanged, to their lives off the boat.

The novel's U.S. copyright expired on January 1, 2023, when all works published in 1927 entered the public domain.[5]

  1. ^ Edwin McDowell, "Faulkner Manuscript is Bought," New York Times, October 10, 1987, accessed May 12, 2012. ProQuest.
  2. ^ McDowell, "Faulkner Manuscript."
  3. ^ John Earl Bassett, "Mosquitoes: Toward the Self Image of an Artist." The Southern Literary Journal (Spring, 1980): 50.
  4. ^ McDowell, "Faulkner Manuscript."
  5. ^ Schaub, Michael (December 20, 2022). "These Books Will Enter the Public Domain in 2023". Kirkus Reviews. Retrieved January 1, 2023.