This celebrated book, the sixth of William Faulkner's novels in order of publication, first appeared on February 9, 1931, but a draft of the manuscript had been finished nearly two years earlier.  When Mr. Faulkner saw the galley proofs of that version of Sanctuary, he felt “that there were but two things to do: tear it up or rewrite it."   He chose the latter course and did a thorough revision of the book, cutting some sections entirely and adding new ones, rewriting other sections in whole or in part, and rearranging the order of the narration. He thus succeeded in making it a book which "would not shame . . .too much," as he put it, The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying, which had been published in the two preceding years.