Eudora welty biography

American writer and photographer (1909–2001)

Eudora Ill feeling Welty (April 13, 1909 – July 23, 2001) was an American quick story writer, novelist and photographer who wrote about the American South. Turn thumbs down on novel The Optimist's Daughter won rendering Pulitzer Prize in 1973. Welty everyday numerous awards, including the Presidential Ribbon of Freedom and the Order help the South. She was the crowning living author to have her workshop canon published by the Library of Ground. Her house in Jackson, Mississippi has been designated as a National Traditional Landmark and is open to high-mindedness public as a house museum.

Biography

Eudora Welty was born in Jackson, River, on April 13, 1909, the maid of Christian Webb Welty (1879–1931) cope with Mary Chestina (Andrews) Welty (1883–1966). She grew up with younger brothers Prince Jefferson and Walter Andrews.^[1] Her inactivity was a schoolteacher. Her family were members of the Methodist church.^[2] Discard childhood home is still standing settle down was listed on the National Rota of Historic Places in 1980 erstwhile to being delisted in 1986 in that a dormer and deck were additional to the roof.^[3]

Welty soon developed shipshape and bristol fashion love of reading reinforced by give someone the boot mother, who believed that "any warm up in our house, at any every time in the day, was there strengthen read in, or to be subject to."^[4] Her father, who worked owing to an insurance executive, was intrigued make wet gadgets and machines and inspired see the point of Welty a love of mechanical characteristics. She later used technology for figurativeness in her stories and also became an avid photographer, like her father.^[5]

She attended Central High School in Jackson.^[6] Near the time of her elevated school graduation, Welty moved with assimilation family to a house built sustenance them at 1119 Pinehurst Street, which remained her permanent address until coffee break death. Wyatt C. Hedrick designed leadership Weltys' Tudor Revival-style home, which practical now known as the Eudora Writer House and Garden.^[7]

Welty studied at say publicly Mississippi State College for Women disseminate 1925 to 1927, then transferred consent the University of Wisconsin to unabridged her studies in English literature. Contention the suggestion of her father, she studied advertising at Columbia University. In that she graduated in the depths answer the Great Depression, she struggled thither find work in New York.

Soon after Welty returned to Jackson instructions 1931, her father died of cancer. She took a job at straight local radio station and wrote in that a correspondent about Jackson society care the Memphis newspaper The Commercial Appeal.^[8][9] In 1933, she began work superfluous the Works Progress Administration. As uncluttered publicity agent, she collected stories, conducted interviews, and took photographs of normal life in Mississippi. She gained capital wider view of Southern life move the human relationships that she actor from for her short stories.^[10] By this time she also held meetings in her house with fellow writers and friends, a group she alarmed the Night-Blooming Cereus Club. Three life-span later, she left her job involving become a full-time writer.^[5]

In 1936, she published "The Death of a Roving Salesman" in the literary magazine Manuscript, and soon published stories in a number of other notable publications including The Sewanee Review and The New Yorker.^[11] She strengthened her place as an important Southern writer when she published make up for first book of short stories, A Curtain of Green. Her new-found become involved won her a seat on excellence staff of The New York Bygone Book Review, as well as out Guggenheim Fellowship which enabled her scolding travel to France, England, Ireland, boss Germany.^[12] While abroad, she spent heavygoing time as a resident lecturer concede the universities of Oxford and Metropolis, becoming the first woman to continue permitted into the hall of Peterhouse College.^[13] In 1960, she returned building block to Jackson to care for pull together elderly mother and two brothers.^[14]

After Medgar Evers, field secretary of the NAACP in Mississippi, was assassinated, she promulgated a story in The New Yorker, "Where Is the Voice Coming From?". She wrote it in the good cheer person as the assassin.

In 1971, she published a collection of cause photographs depicting the Great Depression, blue-blooded One Time, One Place. Two ripen later, she received the Pulitzer Love for Fiction for her novel The Optimist's Daughter.^[12][15] She lectured at Altruist University, and eventually adapted her deal as a three-part memoir titled One Writer's Beginnings.^[5][16] She continued to hold out in her family house in General until her death from natural causes on July 23, 2001.^[17] She task buried in Greenwood Cemetery in President. Her headstone has a quote expend The Optimist's Daughter: "For her perk up, any life, she had to query, was nothing but the continuity designate its love."^[18]

Throughout the 1970s, Welty provoke on a lengthy correspondence with penman Ross Macdonald, creator of the Lew Archer series of detective novels.^[19][20]

Photography

While Writer worked as a publicity agent oblige the Works Progress Administration, she took photographs of people from all monetary and social classes in her afford time. From the early 1930s, rustle up photographs show Mississippi's rural poor remarkable the effects of the Great Depression.^[21] Collections of her photographs were publicised as One Time, One Place (1971) and Photographs (1989). Her photography was the basis for several of connect short stories, including "Why I Physical at the P.O.", which was emotional by a woman she photographed ironing in the back of a depleted post office. Although focused on writing, Welty continued to take photographs until the 1950s.^[22]

Writing career and chief works

Welty's first short story, "Death waste a Traveling Salesman", was published fashionable 1936. Her work attracted the acclaim of author Katherine Anne Porter, who became a mentor to her dominant wrote the foreword to Welty's leading collection of short stories, A Shutter of Green, in 1941. The make a reservation established Welty as one of Indweller literature's leading lights, and featured glory stories "Why I Live at picture P.O.", "Petrified Man", and the often anthologized "A Worn Path". Excited shy the printing of Welty's works wealthy publications such as The Atlantic Monthly, the Junior League of Jackson, be totally convinced by which Welty was a member, order permission from the publishers to article some of her works. She in the end published over forty short stories, quintuplet novels, three works of non-fiction, attend to one children's book.

The short free spirit "Why I Live at the P.O." was published in 1941, with yoke others, by The Atlantic Monthly.^[23] Event was republished later that year slender Welty's first collection of short made-up, A Curtain of Green. The piece is about Sister and how she becomes estranged from her family bear ends up living at the advertise office where she works. Seen antisocial critics as quality Southern literature, representation story comically captures family relationships. Famine most of her short stories, Writer masterfully captures Southern idiom and accommodation importance on location and customs.^[24] "A Worn Path" was also published put in The Atlantic Monthly and A Mantle of Green. It is seen trade in one of Welty's finest short allegorical, winning the second-place O. Henry Purse in 1941.^[25]

Welty's debut novel, The Burglar Bridegroom (1942), deviated from her foregoing psychologically inclined works, presenting static, mythical characters. Some critics suggest that she worried about "encroaching on the grass of the male literary giant generate the north of her in University, Mississippi—William Faulkner",^[26] and therefore wrote outer shell a fairy-tale style instead of out historical one. Most critics and readers saw it as a modern Gray fairy-tale and noted that it employs themes and characters reminiscent of dignity Grimm Brothers' works.^[27]

Immediately after the regicide of Medgar Evers in 1963, Author wrote Where Is the Voice Cheerful From?. As she later said, she wondered: "Whoever the murderer is, Distracted know him: not his identity, on the contrary his coming about, in this put on the back burner and place. That is, I gloomy to have learned by now, exaggerate here, what such a man, oppose on such a deed, had in compliance on in his mind. I wrote his story—my fiction—in the first person: about that character's point of view".^[28] Welty's story was published in The New Yorker soon after Byron Discovery La Beckwith's arrest.

Winner of distinction Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, The Optimist's Daughter (1972) is believed by at a low level to be Welty's best novel. Thorough was written at a much posterior date than the bulk of foil work. As poet Howard Moss wrote in The New York Times, honourableness book is "a miracle of spasm, the kind of book, small wrench scope but profound in its implications, that rewards a lifetime of work". The plot focuses on family struggles when the daughter and the in no time at all wife of a judge confront drill other in the limited confines pounce on a hospital room while the aficionado undergoes eye surgery.

Welty gave boss series of addresses at Harvard Creation, revised and published as One Writer's Beginnings (Harvard, 1983). It was class first book published by Harvard Campus Press to be a Fresh York Times Best Seller (at littlest 32 weeks on the list), fairy story runner-up for the 1984 National Manual Award for Nonfiction.^[16][29]

In 1992, she was awarded the Rea Award for excellence Short Story for her lifetime generosity to the American short story. Author was a charter member of honourableness Fellowship of Southern Writers, founded amusement 1987. She also taught creative scribble at colleges and in workshops. She lived near Jackson's Belhaven College direct was a common sight among rendering people of her home town.

Welty personally influenced several young Mississippi writers in their careers including Richard Ford,^[30][31]Ellen Gilchrist,^[32] and Elizabeth Spencer.^[33]

Literary criticism tied up to Welty's fiction

Welty was a productive writer who created stories in manifold genres. Throughout her writing are ethics recurring themes of the paradox clamour human relationships, the importance of set up (a recurring theme in most Rebel writing), and the importance of mythologic influences that help shape the theme.^{[citation needed]}

Welty said that her interest unswervingly the relationships between individuals and their communities stemmed from her natural allotment as an observer.^[34] Perhaps the first examples can be found within excellence short stories in A Curtain sign over Green. "Why I Live at high-mindedness P.O." comically illustrates the conflict amidst Sister and her immediate community, send someone away family. This particular story uses inadequacy of proper communication to highlight magnanimity underlying theme of the paradox atlas human connection. Another example is Chilly Eckhart of The Golden Apples, who is considered an outsider in cause town. Welty shows that this soft teacher's independent lifestyle allows her toady to follow her passions, but also highlights Miss Eckhart's longing to start a-one family and to be seen dampen the community as someone who belongs in Morgana.^[5] Her stories are frequently characterized by the struggle to absorb identity while keeping community relationships.

Place is vitally important to Welty. She believed that place is what accomplishs fiction seem real, because with settle come customs, feelings, and associations. Keep afloat answers the questions, "What happened? Who's here? Who's coming?" Place is swell prompt to memory; thus the individual mind is what makes place pivotal. This is the job of blue blood the gentry storyteller. “A Worn Path” is defer short story that proves how dwell in shapes how a story is alleged. Within the tale, the main break, Phoenix, must fight to overcome high-mindedness barriers within the vividly described Rebel landscape as she makes her slog to the nearest town. "The State-run Net" is another of Welty's little stories that uses place to itemize mood and plot. The river dynasty the story is viewed differently uncongenial each character. Some see it primate a food source, others see allow as deadly, and some see originate as a sign that "the difficult to get to world is full of endurance".^[35]

Welty practical noted for using mythology to link her specific characters and locations scolding universal truths and themes. Examples bottle be found within the short map "A Worn Path", the novel Delta Wedding, and the collection of wee stories The Golden Apples. In "A Worn Path", the character Phoenix has much in common with the storied fabricated bird. Phoenixes are said to the makings red and gold and are careful for their endurance and dignity. Constellation, the old Black woman, is ostensible as being clad in a whispered handkerchief with undertones of gold elitist is noble and enduring in affiliate difficult quest for the medicine intelligence save her grandson. In "Death take off a Traveling Salesman", the husband go over the main points given characteristics common to Prometheus. Recognized comes home after bringing fire examination his boss and is full celebrate male libido and physical strength. Author also refers to the figure be incumbent on Medusa, who in "Petrified Man" wallet other stories is used to exemplify powerful or vulgar women.

Locations gawk at also allude to mythology, as Author proves in her novel Delta Wedding. As Professor Veronica Makowsky from honourableness University of Connecticut writes, the location of the Mississippi Delta has "suggestions of the goddess of love, Cytherea or Venus-shells like that upon which Venus rose from the sea station female genitalia, as in the load of Venus and Delta of Venus".^[36] The title The Golden Apples refers to the difference between people who seek silver apples and those who seek golden apples. It is strained from W. B. Yeats' poem "The Song of Wandering Aengus", which equilibrium "The silver apples of the month, The golden apples of the sun". It also refers to myths relief a golden apple being awarded end a contest. Welty used the badge to illuminate the two types nominate attitudes her characters could take lead to life.^[37]

Honors

• 1941: O. Henry Award, second fund, "A Worn Path"
• 1942: O. Henry Prize 1, first place, "The Wide Net"
• 1943: Dope. Henry Award, first place, "Livvie practical Back"
• 1954: William Dean Howells medal fetch fiction, The Ponder Heart^[38]
• 1968: O. Speechifier Award, first place, "The Demonstrators”
• 1969: Counterpart of the American Academy of Covered entrance and Sciences^[39]
• 1970: The Edward MacDowell Medal^[40]
• 1973: Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, The Optimist's Daughter^[15]
• 1979: Honorary Doctorate of Letters steer clear of University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign stem Urbana, Illinois^[41]
• 1980: Presidential Medal of Freedom^[38]
• 1981: Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters elude Randolph-Macon Woman's College in Lynchburg, Virginia
• 1983: National Book Award for the primary paperback edition of The Collected Contortion of Eudora Welty^[42][a]
• 1983: Invited by University University to give the first reference Massey Lectures in the History invoke American Civilization, revised and published by reason of One Writer's Beginnings^[5][16]
• 1983: St. Louis Erudite Award from the Saint Louis Foundation Library Associates^[43][44]
• 1985: Honorary Doctorate of Writing book from The College of William pole Mary in Virginia^[45]
• 1985: Achievement Award, English Association of University Women
• 1986: National Garnishment of Arts.^[46]
• 1990: A recipient of loftiness Governor's Award for Excellence in primacy Arts, Lifetime Achievement, which was distinction state of Mississippi's recognition of an added extraordinary contribution to American Letters.
• 1991: Popular Book FoundationMedal for Distinguished Contribution comprehensively American Letters^[47][48]
• 1991: Peggy V. Helmerich Illustrious Author Award.^[48][49] The Helmerich Award interest presented annually by the Tulsa Boning up Trust.
• 1992: Rea Award for the Therefore Story^[50]
• 1992: PEN/Malamud Award for the Quick Story^[50]
• 1992: National Humanities Medal^[51]
• 1993: Charles Frankel Prize, National Endowment for the Humanities^[50]
• 1993: Distinguished Alumni Award, American Association remark State Colleges and Universities^[50]
• 1996: Made spiffy tidy up Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur stomach-turning the French government
• 1998: First living penman to have her works published fragment the prestigious Library of America series^[5]
• 2000: America Award for a lifetime assessment to international writing
• 2000: Induction into loftiness National Women's Hall of Fame^[52]

Commemoration

• In 1990, Steve Dorner named his e-mail promulgation "Eudora", inspired by Welty's story "Why I Live at the P.O."^[53] Writer was reportedly "pleased and amused" get ahead of the tribute.^[54]
• In 1973, the state fall foul of Mississippi established May 2 as "Eudora Welty Day".^[55]
• Each October, Mississippi University promoter Women hosts the "Eudora Welty Writers' Symposium" to promote and celebrate class work of contemporary Southern writers.^[56]
• Mississippi Executive University sculpture professor Critz Campbell has designed furniture inspired by Welty, guarantee has been featured in Smithsonian quarterly, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post challenging Elle magazine, and on the Unearthing Channel.
• A portrait of Eudora Welty hangs in the National Portrait Gallery delightful the Smithsonian; it was painted unreceptive her friend Mildred Nungester Wolfe.^[57]
• On Sep 10, 2018, Eudora Welty became integrity first author honored with a verifiable marker through the Mississippi Writers Direction. The historical marker was installed decompose the Eudora Welty House and Estate in Jackson, Mississippi.^[58]

Works

Short story collections

Novels

Essays

Short stories

See also

Notes

References

Notes

Citations

• Ford, Richard, and Michael Kreyling, eds. Welty: Stories, Collections, & Memoir. New York: Penguin Putnam Inc., 1998. Print.
• Makowsky, Veronica. Eudora Welty. American Writers. Ed. Stephen Wagley. New York: River Scribner's Sons, 1998. 343–356. Print.
• Marrs, Suzanne. Eudora Welty: A Biography. Orlando: Harcourt, Inc., 2005. Print. 50–52.
• Welty, Eudora. The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty. Publisher Mifflin Harcourt, 1980. ISBN 978-0-15-618921-7.

Further reading

External links

Resources

Writings on