"'The Bear' is a composite narrative of the initiation and inheritance of Isaac McCaslin (born in 1867), the last direct male descendant of Lucius Quintus Carothers McCaslin, who purchased land from the Chickasaw Indians." —A William Faulkner Encyclopedia. A version of it was published as a short story in The Saturday Evening Post on May 9, 1942. It was subsequently incorporated into the author's novel Go Down, Moses (1942); but has since sometimes been published as a free-standing novella.
