Southern Renaissance

Mississippi Renaissance

Welty and Faulkner

Twentieth-Century American Novel

Nineteenth-Century American Novel

American literature surveys

Introduction to Interpretation

Liberal Studies 1000

Eudora Welty and Suzanne Marrs

(Photo by Nancy Ellis)

My research for the past twenty-eight years has centered upon the life and works of Eudora Welty. I am particularly interested in the role that biography plays in Welty's fiction and upon the historical and social contexts out of which her fiction has developed. A bibliography of my books and articles about Welty follows.

Eudora Welty, A Biography. New York: Harcourt, 2005.

One Writer's Imagination: The Fiction of Eudora Welty. Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2002.

Did the Writer Crusade: Welty and the Politics. Co-edited with Harriet Pollack. Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2001.

The Welty Collection. A Guide to the Eudora Welty Manuscripts and Documents at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 1988.

"Place and the Displaced in Eudora Welty's The Bride of the Innisfallen." Mississippi Quarterly L.4 (Fall 1997): 647-68.

"'The Treasure Most Dearly Regarded': Memory and Imagination in Delta Wedding." Southern Literary Journal. XXV.2 (1993): 79-91.

"Eudora Welty's Photography: Images into Fiction." Critical Essays on Eudora Welty. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1989. 280-96.

"Eudora Welty." Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. Eds. Charles Reagan Wilson and William Ferris. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989. 899-900. (With assistance from Warren Akin and Robert Linn)

"LOSING BATTLES." Reference Guide to American Literature. Second Edition. Chicago and London: St. James Press, 1987. 655-56.

"Eudora Welty: The Southern Context." Perspectives on the South, IV (1987), 19-37.

"The Metaphor of Race in Eudora Welty's Fiction." The Southern Review, 22 (Fall 1986), 697-707. Reprinted inContemporary Literary Criticism, vol. 105 (1998).

"More Notes on River Country." Written jointly with Mary Hughes Brookhart. Mississippi Quarterly, XXXIX (Fall 1986) Special Welty Issue, 507-19. Reprinted in Welty, A Life in Literature. Ed. Albert Devlin. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1987.

"The Making of Losing Battles: Plot Revision." Southern Literary Journal, XVIII (Fall 1985), 40-49.

"The Making of Losing Battles: Jack Renfro's Evolution." Mississippi Quarterly, 37 (Fall 1984), 469-74.

"The Making of Losing Battles: Judge Moody Transformed." Notes on Mississippi Writers, 17 (1985), 47-53.

"An Annotated Bibliography of the Losing Battles Papers." Southern Quarterly, XXIII (Winter 1985), 116-21.

"Eudora Welty's Snowy Heron." American Literature, 53 (1982), 723-25.

"The Conclusion of Eudora Welty's 'First Love': Historical Backgrounds." Notes on Mississippi Writers, XIII (1981), 73-78.

"John James Audubon in Fiction and Poetry: Literary Portraits by Eudora Welty and Robert Penn Warren." Southern Studies, 20 (1981), 378-83.

April 13, 1909-Born in Jackson, Mississippi, at 741 N. Congress Street

1925-Graduates from Jackson's Central High School

1925-27-Attends Mississippi State College for Women, Columbus, Mississippi

1927-29-Attends and graduates from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin

1930-31-Attends Columbia University School of Business

1931-Christian Webb Welty, Eudora Welty's father, dies.

1931-34-Welty works in Jackson at WJDX radio station.

1933-35-Welty writes Jackson society columns for the Memphis Commercial Appeal.

1936-Welty works as Junior publicity agent for the Works Progress Administration in Jackson.

1936-Welty publishes her first stories, "Death of a Traveling Salesman" and "Magic," in Manuscript magazine.

1937-39-Welty publishes ten stories in the Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, River.

1939-Welty works for the Mississippi Advertising Commission.

1940-Diarmuid Russell becomes Eudora Welty's agent.

1941-Welty publishes stories in the Atlantic Monthly and Harper's Bazaar. Her first book of stories, A Curtain of Green, is published.

1942-The Robber Bridegroom

1943-The Wide Net

1944-Welty works for several months as a copyeditor for the New York Times Book Review.

1945-Delta Wedding

1946-47-Welty has two extended stays in San Francisco.

1949-The Golden Apples

1949-50-Welty travels through Europe on a Guggenheim Fellowship.

1951-Welty spends a few months in England and Ireland.

1952-Elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters.

1954-Welty lectures at Cambridge University in England and publishes The Ponder Heart.

1955-The Bride of the Innisfallen; Welty receives Howell's Medal from Academy of Arts and Letters.

1956-Jerome Chodorov's and Joseph Fields's dramatization of The Ponder Heart runs on Broadway.

1959-Welty's brother Walter dies.

1963-Welty publishes "Where is the Voice Coming From?" in the New Yorker.

1966-Welty's mother Chestina and her brother Edward die.

1966-"The Demonstrators" appears in the New Yorker.

1969-"The Optimist's Daughter" appears in the New Yorker.

1970-Welty publishes Losing Battles, a novel begun in 1955.

1971-Welty's book of photographs, One Time, One Place, is published.

1972-The Optimist's Daughter in revised and expanded form is published, and Welty receives the Gold Medal for Fiction from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and she is elected to American Academy of Arts and Letters.

1973-The Optimist's Daughter receives a Pulitzer Prize.

1974-Welty travels through Italy and France.

1976-Alfred Uhry's dramatization of The Robber Bridegroom runs on Broadway.

1978-The Eye of the Story.

1979-Artist-in-residence, British Studies Program, Associated Colleges of the South, held at Oxford University

1980-The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty

1981-Welty receives National Medal of Literature and Medal of Freedom.

1983-Welty delivers the William E. Massey, Sr., Lectures in the History of American Civilization at Harvard University.

1984-One Writer's Beginnings; Welty travels to England and Italy.

1989-Photographs

1991-Norton Book of Friendship, co-edited with Ronald A. Sharp

1996-Receives French Legion of Honor in ceremony held at the Old Capitol in Jackson.

1998-The Library of America publishes two volumes of Welty's fiction and non-fiction, making her the only living writer whose works have become part of this distinguished series.

2001-Eudora Welty dies on July 23.

Books by Eudora Welty

A Curtain of Green (1941)

The Robber Bridegroom (1942)

The Wide Net (1943)

Delta Wedding (1945)

The Golden Apples (1949)

The Ponder Heart (1954)

The Bride of the Innisfallen (1955)

Losing Battles (1970)

The Optimist's Daughter (1972)

The Eye of the Story (1979)

The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty (1980)

One Writer's Beginnings (1984)

Eudora Welty. Vols. 1 and 2. Library of America. (1998)



Books of Welty Photographs

Country Churchyards. Jackson: Univ. Press of Miss., 2001. (Introduction by Elizabeth Spencer)

One Time, One Place. New York: Random House, 1971.

Other Places. Ed. Patti Carr Black. Jackson: Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

Photographs. Jackson: Univ. Press of Mississippi, 1989. (Including essay by Reynolds Price)

Welty. Ed. Patti Carr Black. Jackson: Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

Books About Eudora Welty

Devlin, Albert. Eudora Welty's Chronicle. Jackson: Univ. Press of Miss., 1983.

___. Ed. Welty: A Life in Literature. Jackson: Univ. Press of Miss., 1987.

Harrison, Suzan. Eudora Welty and Virginia Woolf. Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1997.

Kreyling, Michael. Eudora Welty's Achievement of Order. Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1980.

Kreyling, Michael. Author and Agent. New York: Farrrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1991.

Mark, Rebecca. The Dragon's Blood. Jackson: Univ. Press of Miss., 1994.

Marrs, Suzanne. The Welty Collection. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1988.

Mortimer, Gail. Daughter of the Swan. Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 1994.

Pollack, Harriet and Marrs, Suzanne. Eds. Eudora Welty and Politics: Did the Writer Crusade? Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2001.

Prenshaw, Peggy. Ed. Conversations with Eudora Welty. Jackson: Univ. Press of Miss., 1984.

___. Ed. Eudora Welty: Critical Essays. Jackson: Univ. Press of Miss., 1979.

___. Ed. More Conversations with Eudora Welty. Jackson: Univ. Press of Miss., 1996.

Schmidt, Peter. The Heart of the Story. Jackson: Univ. Press of Miss., 1991.

Vande Kieft, Ruth. Eudora Welty. Rev. Ed. Boston: Twayne, 1987.

Weston, Ruth. Gothic Traditions and Narrative Techniques in the Fiction of Eudora Welty. Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1994.

"PASSIONATE OBSERVER: EUDORA WELTY AMONG ARTISTS OF THE THIRTIES"