New Orleans, Orleans Parish story
A Literary Sanctuary
Down a narrow path in Pirates Alley, you'll find a townhouse built in 1837 that served as a sanctuary for a young writer. In the 1920s, William Faulkner lived here, and it was wit…
Read the story
Down a narrow path in Pirates Alley, you'll find a townhouse built in 1837 that served as a sanctuary for a young writer. In the 1920s, William Faulkner lived here, and it was within these walls that he completed his very first novel, Soldiers' Pay. He also spent his time here working for a literary journal called Double Dealer.
Today, the ground floor is occupied by Faulkner House Books, a shop specializing in rare editions that opened on the author's birthday in 1990. It's a quiet, scholarly corner of the French Quarter where the ghost of Faulkner's early literary struggles still lingers among the bookshelves.
Updated June 2026