SOURCE: “William March: Regional Perspective and Beyond,” in Papers on Language and Literature, Vol. 13, No. 4, Fall, 1977, pp. 430-43.

In the following essay, Going reviews March's published work and suggests directions for March scholarship.

William March (1893-1954) has been praised as “the most underrated of all contemporary writers of fiction” and “one of the finest technicians writing the short story in English.”¹ Between 1929 and 1954 he published six novels—including the memorable Company K and the popular The Bad Seed—and some seventy short stories; he also wrote over one hundred fables, amassed a personal fortune as vice president of Waterman Steamship Corporation, and assembled one of the finest private collections of modern French paintings in the United States.² Often compared by contemporary critics to his fellow Southerner, William Faulkner, March depicted southern Alabama in both novel and short story. Since there has been no book-length study of March, this...