To mark the 50th anniversary of his death, the Folio Society is printing Faulkner's 1929 novel the way he intended, with different colours marking chronological shifts in the story

Over 80 years after The Sound and the Fury made its debut on the literary stage, the novel which would go on to become one of the classics of 20th-century American literature is finally being published the way William Faulkner intended.

The four sections of the book, which tells of the disintegration of a southern family, move back and forth through time. Faulkner had hoped to use different colours of ink to mark the sometimes-confusing chronological shifts, writing on its publication in 1929: "I wish publishing was advanced enough to use colored ink ... I'll just have to save the idea until publishing grows up."

Instead, the Nobel prize-winning author had to be content with using italics to convey different periods in time, and what he called the "unbroken-surfaced confusion" of Benjy's narrative, the first section of the novel which is told from the perspective of an adult with the mind of a child. "If I could only get it printed the way it ought to be with different color types for the different times in Benjy's section recording the flow of events for him, it would make it simpler, probably. I don't reckon, though, it'll ever be printed that way, and this'll have to be the best, with the italics indicating the changes of events," said Faulkner.

Now, following a suggestion from a member, the Folio Society has worked with two Faulkner scholars, Stephen Ross and Noel Polk, for the past year to pin down the different time periods in the novel, and is publishing the first ever coloured-ink edition of The Sound and the Fury on Friday 6 July, to mark the 50th anniversary of the author's death.

The book was described by Faulkner himself as "a real son-of-a-bitch ... the greatest I'll ever write". Although attempts have been made in the past to pin down its shifting chronology – Faulkner himself recalled eight time-levels at a moment's notice – this is the first ever printed edition, according to The Folio Society.

"It's something of a hypothetical rendering of what Faulkner might have wished," said Neil Titman, Folio's commissioning editor for limited editions. "Noel's initial reaction was wariness of the imposition of a reading or readings that might take away from the experience. But after cogitating the editors decided it would be fun, and would open the debate around the book again for Faulknerians."

Ross and Polk found 14 different timelines in Benjy's section of the book, which moves through the years between 1900 and its opening in 7 April 1928 as Luster and Benjy roam the Compson grounds. The periods are marked out with a wide variety of colours in the limited new edition, from an "alpine green" for Caddy's wedding on 25 April 1910, to a rich deep red for 1900, when Quentin gets into a fight at school. Faulkner's original italics are maintained throughout.

The latter sections of the book have not been coloured for the new edition. "We put to the scholars the idea of going beyond Benjy and colouring Quentin and Jason's sections, but Noel and Stephen had a go at the Quentin section and gave up," said Titman. "They said that unlike Benjy's section, in Quentin's there were nuances they simply couldn't disentangle or unpick, so it defied that kind of unravelling. And Faulkner himself didn't envisage any other part of the book being treated in that fashion, anyway."

Titman brushed aside concerns that the colouring was placing a single interpretation on Faulkner's multifaceted work. "With the Benjy section the different threads are sufficiently clear that I don't feel we are distorting or compromising the novel," he said. "I found the book tremendously confusing the first time I read it so I think that overall you have a net gain here, rather than feeling over-guided." He called the edition, 1,480 copies of which are being published, "adventurous and respectful of the author's expressed wishes".