The Hamlet was published by Random House, New York, on 1 April 1940, in a first printing of approximately 5,000 copies priced at $2.50. It is the first volume of what became the Snopes trilogy (followed by The Town in 1957 and The Mansion in 1959), chronicling the rise of the Snopes clan — a family of poor whites who ascend from tenant farming to economic and political dominance in Yoknapatawpha County. The Hamlet is set in Frenchman’s Bend, a rural hamlet where Flem Snopes arrives as a clerk in Will Varner’s store and proceeds — through relentless, silent, amoral bargaining — to acquire everything of value in the community.
The Novel
The Hamlet is constructed from reworked short stories and new material, giving it an episodic structure that is both a weakness and a strength. The four sections — “Flem,” “Eula,” “The Long Summer,” and “The Peasants” — can almost stand alone, but their accumulation creates a devastating portrait of a community being slowly consumed by a single family’s acquisitiveness.
Flem Snopes is one of Faulkner’s most disturbing creations — not because he is violent (he is not) but because he is utterly without interiority. He never speaks except to make deals. He has no desires except accumulation. He is impotent — physically and spiritually — and his power derives entirely from his willingness to be patient, silent, and completely without scruple. He is capitalism distilled to its essence: pure acquisitive will without human content.
Eula Varner is his opposite — a figure of overwhelming physical vitality and sexual abundance. Her marriage to Flem (to conceal her pregnancy by another man) is the novel’s central obscenity: life yoked to death, fertility to impotence, nature to commerce. Eula will eventually destroy herself (in The Town) rather than continue as a possession.
The novel’s most famous episode — the spotted horses auction — is among the greatest set pieces in American fiction. Flem (operating through a Texan intermediary) sells a herd of wild, unbreakable ponies to the men of Frenchman’s Bend. The horses escape, causing chaos, injury, and a lawsuit that reveals the depth of Flem’s cunning: he has arranged the transaction so that he bears no legal responsibility.
Comedy and Darkness
The Hamlet contains some of Faulkner’s funniest writing — the spotted horses episode, the tale of Ab Snopes’s horse-trading, and the Ratliff-Bookwright-Armstid partnership are all rendered with a comic exuberance rare in Faulkner’s major work. But the comedy is inseparable from cruelty: the men who buy the horses are injured and impoverished; Ab Snopes’s barn-burning terrorises innocent families; and the novel’s final scene — Henry Armstid digging in the earth for buried treasure that does not exist, while Flem watches and chews — is one of the most pitiless images in American literature.
Collecting The Hamlet
First edition (1940, Random House): Approximately 5,000 copies, priced at $2.50.
Identification points:
- “First Printing” stated on the copyright page
- Random House colophon on the title page
- Green cloth boards
- Top edge stained green
First edition, first printing:
- Fine/Fine in dust jacket: $5,000–$15,000
- Near Fine in jacket: $2,000–$5,000
- Without jacket: $300–$800
Limited edition: Random House issued a signed, limited edition of 250 copies, numbered and signed by Faulkner, in a slipcase. These bring $5,000–$15,000 depending on condition.
The complete Snopes trilogy (first editions of The Hamlet, The Town, and The Mansion) in dust jackets is a desirable set, bringing $8,000–$20,000 for fine copies.
Value trajectory (2016–2026): Approximately 1.5× for jacketed copies. Less aggressively collected than the major 1929–1936 Faulkner titles, but steady demand from completists and from collectors who prize the novel’s literary quality.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to read the whole Snopes trilogy? The Hamlet stands completely on its own — it is by far the finest of the three volumes. The Town and The Mansion are competent but lack the ferocious energy of the first book.
Is this connected to Faulkner’s other novels? Deeply. The Snopes family is mentioned in many earlier works. V.K. Ratliff (the itinerant sewing-machine salesman who serves as the novel’s moral centre) appears in short stories dating to the late 1920s. Frenchman’s Bend is part of Yoknapatawpha County.
What is the “Snopesism” that critics discuss? The term (coined by critics, not Faulkner) describes the process by which traditional social bonds — honour, community, kinship — are replaced by purely transactional relationships. The Snopes represent modernity as predation.