In 1930, William Faulkner purchased this house and named it Rowan Oak for the rowan tree, a symbol of security and peace. He lived here with his wife and family until his death in 1962. In 1972, his daughter, Jill Faulkner Summers, sold the house to the University of Mississippi as a lasting memorial to her father's literary career. In this house he wrote many of his stories and novels. Faulkner won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949.