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L

• Labove:

• Labove Jr.:

• Lafayette County: Pronounced by inhabitants as "luh FAY et." An actual county in north-central Mississippi, some seventy miles south-southeast of Memphis, Tennessee, and the real-life home of Faulkner for most of his life. Lafayette County, its county seat of Oxford, and several other communities in the county served as the most obvious model for the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, the setting for most of Faulkner’s fiction. Like Yoknapatawpha, Lafayette County is bordered on the north by the Tallahatchie River and on the south by the Yocona River, which on early maps of the region was called "Yockney-patafa" or the like and which served as the source for the fictional county name.

• Lafe: The father of Dewey Dell Bundren's unborn child in As I Lay Dying. He gave her ten dollars to pay for an abortion.

• La Marr, Ruby:

• Laura, Miss: One of Quentin Compson's schoolteachers in Jefferson in The Sound and the Fury.

• Laverne:

• Lawington, Miss: An acquaintance of Cora Tull in As I Lay Dying who advised her about getting a good breed of chickens and told her about a possible sale for cakes which never materialized.

• Leblanc:

• Ledbetter, Mrs.:

• Legate, Bob:

• Legate, Will:

• Legendre, Dr.:

• Lena, Missy:

• Leonora:

• Lessep, "Grandfather":

• Lessep, "Grandmother":

• Lessep, Alexander:

• Levitt, Matt:

• Lightning:

• Lilley:

• Linscomb, Colonel:

• Lion: A dog, found by Sam Fathers, which eventually took on Old Ben, the bear, and won, though at great cost. Major de Spain at first believed the dog was too wild to tame, but Sam Fathers conditioned the dog to tolerate humans through starvation methods. Later, Boon Hogganbeck took over care and feeding of Lion from Sam, even allowing Lion to sleep with him in the cabin at Major de Spain's hunting camp. When Lion attacked Old Ben and refused to let go, Boon finished the job started by Lion by killing the bear with his knife. Afterwards, Boon's first concern was to get Lion to a doctor; though a doctor did tend to Lion's wounds, it was too late: the dog died at sundown the next day.

• Littlejohn: A family name in the Frenchman's Bend region, mentioned in The Hamlet and by Gavin Stevens in Intruder in the Dust. A man with this name was the one-time owner of a Frenchman's Bend boardinghouse bearing his name in The Hamlet, though he apparently died before the novel begins. In the novel, the boardinghouse is run by Mrs. Littlejohn, who may be his widow. In addition, a man named Littlejohn attended Addie Bundren's funeral in As I Lay Dying.

• Littlejohn, Mrs.: The humorless, hard-working owner of Littlejohn's Hotel, a boardinghouse, which is where V. K. Ratliff always stayed when he was in the area, and also where Buck Hipps auctioned off the spotted horses. In The Hamlet, she helped the Armstids when Henry broke his leg, and she looked after the idiot Ike Snopes, who slept in her barn. She is also mentioned in Flags in the Dust. The hotel is mentioned also in The Town.

• Lizzie:

• Log-in-the-Creek: A lazy Indian who played the harmonica and won as a wife for himself Herman Basket's sister from Ikkemotubbe and David Hogganbeck, who were competing against each other to win her hand in "A Courtship."

• Long, Judge:

• Loosh (Lucius): Joby's son and Philadelphy's husband in The Unvanquished. Of all the blacks living on the Sartoris plantation, Loosh was the only one who left in search of freedom during the Civil War. He revealed the hiding place of the Sartoris silver to Union Army soldiers and went away with them, to the utter shame of his mother, Louvinia. He appears also in "My Grandmother Millard."

• Lorraine: The Memphis mistress Jason kept in The Sound and the Fury. She may be the same prostitute depicted in Sanctuary.

• Louisa:

• Louvinia: Joby's wife, mother of Philadelphy, and grandmother of Ringo in The Unvanquished. She served as cook for the Sartoris family, and she helped Colonel John Sartoris escape from the Yankees by having his boots and pistol ready for him when he needed them. She appears also in Sartoris/Flags in the Dust and "My Grandmother Millard."

• Lovelady:

• Lovemaiden, Butch:

• Lowe, Julian: A young cadet in Soldiers' Pay who met Margaret Powers aboard a train and immediately fell in love with her. Though he departed from the novel's plot very quickly, he wrote frequent letters to Margaret reminding her of his love.

• Ludus:

• Lufbery: An American mentioned by Julian Lowe in Soldiers' Pay as having been with the French military until the U.S. entered World War I.

• Luke:

• Luster: Born ca. 1911. Frony's son, and grandson of Roskus and Dilsey Gibson in The Sound and the Fury. He was the last black caretaker of Benjy Compson, when Benjy was in his thirties. In the first section of The Sound and the Fury, he was diligently searching for a quarter in order to attend a traveling "show" that was in town. Characters named Luster also appear in Absalom, Absalom! and The Reivers.

• Lytle, Horace:

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