This is probably the most unique bookstore I've ever been to (if not ever, then a very long time). It is quintessential New Orleans and absolute gem. On top of incredible architecture, the book selection is amazing. They have everything from beautifully reprinted classics to great new authors, and everything in between.
Below are pages from their
website:
About Faulkner House Books
Established fifteen years ago on William Faulkner’s birthday, September 25, Faulkner House Books has been a full-service new and used book store serving the New Orleans, Louisiana, area and customers around the world.
Faulkner House Books
Faulkner House Books is located at 624 Pirate’s Alley in the heart of New Orleans’ beautiful and historic French Quarter, just off Jackson Square, behind the Cabildo and opposite St. Louis Cathedral’s rear garden.
Owned and operated by attorney Joseph J. DeSalvo Jr., Faulkner House Books is a sanctuary for fine literature and rare editions, including, of course, books by and about Mr. Faulkner. Frequently featured in the national news media, Faulkner House Books has been described by both collectors and writers as America’s most charming book store. Newcomers to the book store find the owner and managers knowledgeable, helpful, and hospitable.
Specialties
Bookstore interior
In addition to William Faulkner, our specialties include Tennessee Williams, Walker Percy, Modern First Editions, Southern Americana with an emphasis on New Orleans and Louisiana-related titles, and Johnsoniana.
We welcome special requests and do custom searches. There are thousands of additional titles in our open shop and off-site warehouses that are not yet on this Web site. In addition, our dedicated staff members make several book-buying trips a year, in the United States and abroad.
Be sure to let us know about your special requests, and we will keep a sharp lookout for you!
A Literary Landmark
Faulkner House is a national literary landmark. The 27-year-old future Nobel Laureate William Faulkner rented rooms on the ground floor in 1925, the same space that houses the bookstore today. Faulkner arrived in New Orleans as an unsung poet and by the time he left for France a year later, he was well on his way to becoming America’s most famous novelist.
Plaque outside of bookstore
Mentored by his neighbor Sherwood Anderson, who convinced him to shift his focus from poetry to prose, he had written and published his first novel, Soldiers’ Pay, within a year of arriving. To support himself, he wrote a series of poetic sketches about New Orleans, which later were collected in New Orleans Sketches. Faulkner’s first work was published by a New Orleans journal, The Double Dealer, founded by a group of talented New Orleans poets in response to H. L. Mencken's description of New Orleans as a cultural wasteland.
The journal was active for several years and also published the early work of Hemingway, Dos Passos, Sherwood Anderson and other authors who later became famous. Faulkner sub-leased the ground floor from William Spratling, the famous artist, jewelry designer, and architect, who later went on to regenerate the silver industry in Mexico at Taxco. Spratling himself was leasing the whole house from a Creole family. While living on Pirate’s Alley, Faulkner and Spratling produced a book satirizing their friends, Sherwood Anderson And Other Famous Creoles. New Orleans also provided inspiration for the future novels Mosquitoes, The Wild Palms, Absalom! Absalom!, and Pylon.
