ENG 232: American Literature Survey

Eudora Welty's writing and photography were the subject of more than one thousand reviews, of which over two hundred are collected here. The reviews selected for reprinting here represent the diversity of Welty's reception and assessment and the nuances of Welty's much admired but challenging style.

In this definitive and authoritative account, Suzanne Marrs restores Welty's story to human proportions, tracing Welty's life from her roots in Jackson, Mississippi, to her rise to international stature. Making generous use of Welty's correspondence-particularly with contemporaries and admirers, including Katherine Anne Porter, E. M. Forster, and Elizabeth Bowen-Marrs has provided a fitting and fascinating tribute to one of the finest writers of the twentieth century.

This study offers 14 essays by critics of Southern literature on Welty's last two novels: Losing Battles (1970), an experiment in narration, and The Optimist's Daughter (1972), a comment on our time and winner of a Pulitzer Prize. This collection seeks to stimulate interest in Welty's work as a novelist and to serve as a guide to reading and to teaching her late novels.

This work is based on and examines the premise that the vision of reality projected in Welty's writing is of a holistic rather than a dualistic nature. Chapters are devoted to a variety of Welty's writings including One Writer's Beginnings, The Robber Bridegroom, and Delta Wedding.

A significant contribution to the world of letters, Ann Waldron's biography chronicles the history and achievements of one of our greatest living authors, from a Mississippi childhood to the sale of her first short story, from her literary friendships with Katherine Anne Porter and Elizabeth Bowen to her rivalry with Carson McCullers. Elegant and authoritative, this first biography to chart the life of a national treasure is a must-have for Welty fans and scholars everywhere.

This collection of interviews spans forty years of Eudora Welty's literary career. From these conversations an image of Welty emerges that differs in some respects from the authorial presence one meets in Welty's essays. Although she discusses many of the same subjects she has written about with great insight and understanding, her exchanges with interviewers reflect a broader range of personality and mood than one typically encounters in Welty's more formal and highly crafted essays.