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The Snopes Trilogy Series

This Southern saga chronicles the rise and fall of a single family within a small American town. Through incisive characterizations and intricate relationships, it explores themes of ambition, power, and moral decay. Each installment peels back layers of complexity as the family strives to dominate their surroundings, often with devastating consequences. It's a powerful narrative about human nature and the inevitability of fate.

The Hamlet
The Town
The Mansion

Recommended Reading Order

  1. 1

    The Hamlet

    3.9(5030)Add rating

    The Hamlet, the first novel of Faulkner's Snopes trilogy, is both an ironic take on classical tragedy and a mordant commentary on the grand pretensions of the antebellum South and the depths of its decay in the aftermath of war and Reconstruction. It tells of the advent and the rise of the Snopes family in Frenchman's Bend, a small town built on the ruins of a once-stately plantation. Flem Snopes -- wily, energetic, a man of shady origins -- quickly comes to dominate the town and its people with his cunning and guile.

    The Hamlet
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  2. 2

    The Town

    • 394 pages
    • 14 hours of reading
    4.0(101)Add rating

    This is the second volume of Faulkner’s trilogy about the Snopes family, his symbol for the grasping, destructive element in the post-bellum South. Like its predecessor, The Hamlet, and its successor, The Mansion, The Town is completely self-contained, but it gains resonance from being read with the other two. The story of Flem Snopes’s ruthless struggle to take over the town of Jefferson, Mississippi, the book is rich in typically Faulknerian episodes of humor and profundity.

    The Town
  3. 3

    The Mansion

    • 482 pages
    • 17 hours of reading
    4.2(84)Add rating

    The Mansion completes Faulkner’s great trilogy of the Snopes family in the mythical county of Yoknapatawpha, Mississippi, which also includes The Hamlet and The Town. Beginning with the murder of Jack Houston, and ending with the murder of Flem Snopes, it traces the downfall of this indomitable post-bellum family, who managed to seize control of the town of Jefferson within a generation.

    The Mansion