Set in Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, The Hamlet is the first book in William Faulkner’s Snopes Trilogy. The Hamlet and the subsequent novels The Town and The Mansion follow the rise of the Snopes family in Yoknapatawpha County. The trilogy was written between 1940 and 1949, with the aim of chronicling the specific course of the Snopes family, particularly Flem, who were key figures in Faulkner’s fictional Yoknapatawpha County. The Hamlet, as the name suggests, covers the smallest and most rural geographic area within the trilogy, the town of Frenchman’s Bend. Centered around the Old Frenchman’s Place, a dilapidated former plantation house that also commonly features in the Yoknapatawpha County stories, Frenchman’s Bend is populated mainly by poor sharecroppers, with struggling white farmers making up the majority of the novel’s characters.

The isolation and comparative poverty of the town’s inhabitants make them easy marks the Snopes family’s schemes. The Snopes family is iconic in Faulkner’s works, particularly the mysterious, ruthless, and isolated Flem Snopes. Ambitious and selfish, the Snopeses “invade” the town, taking over vital industries and services to cement their hold. Flem Snopes is especially unscrupulous, willing to abandon anyone to get ahead.