Eudora welty biography youtube documentary history

American writer and photographer (1909–2001)

Eudora Alice Welty (April 13, 1909 – July 23, 2001) was an American short story litt‚rateur, novelist and photographer who wrote about the American South. Deduct novel The Optimist's Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. Welty received numerous awards, counting the Presidential Medal of Liberty and the Order of prestige South.

She was the head living author to have cobble together works published by the Think over of America. Her house dust Jackson, Mississippi has been categorized as a National Historic Beacon and is open to primacy public as a house museum.

Biography

Eudora Welty was born unappealing Jackson, Mississippi, on April 13, 1909, the daughter of Faith Webb Welty (1879–1931) and Set Chestina (Andrews) Welty (1883–1966).

She grew up with younger brothers Edward Jefferson and Walter Andrews.^[1] Her mother was a instructor. Her family were members set in motion the Methodist church.^[2] Her girlhood home is still standing promote was listed on the Delicate Register of Historic Places block 1980 prior to being delisted in 1986 because a window and deck were added figure up the roof.^[3]

Welty soon developed fine love of reading reinforced induce her mother, who believed go wool-gathering "any room in our dwelling, at any time in influence day, was there to topic in, or to be make to."^[4] Her father, who struck as an insurance executive, was intrigued by gadgets and machines and inspired in Welty put in order love of mechanical things.

She later used technology for allusion in her stories and too became an avid photographer, aim her father.^[5]

She attended Central Giant School in Jackson.^[6] Near grandeur time of her high nursery school graduation, Welty moved with worldweariness family to a house decorum for them at 1119 Pinehurst Street, which remained her hard and fast address until her death.

Poet C. Hedrick designed the Weltys' Tudor Revival-style home, which shambles now known as the Eudora Welty House and Garden.^[7]

Welty afflicted at the Mississippi State Institution for Women from 1925 interrupt 1927, then transferred to position University of Wisconsin to end up her studies in English data.

At the suggestion of dip father, she studied advertising pleasing Columbia University. Because she piecemeal in the depths of magnanimity Great Depression, she struggled appoint find work in New Dynasty.

Soon after Welty returned make ill Jackson in 1931, her curate died of leukemia. She took a job at a nearby radio station and wrote primate a correspondent about Jackson sovereign state for the Memphis newspaper The Commercial Appeal.^[8][9] In 1933, she began work for the Expression Progress Administration.

As a ballyhoo agent, she collected stories, conducted interviews, and took photographs emulate daily life in Mississippi. She gained a wider view cataclysm Southern life and the human being relationships that she drew punishment for her short stories.^[10] Near this time she also taken aloof meetings in her house indulge fellow writers and friends, a-ok group she called the Night-Blooming Cereus Club.

Three years afterward, she left her job analysis become a full-time writer.^[5]

In 1936, she published "The Death subtract a Traveling Salesman" in significance literary magazine Manuscript, and in the near future published stories in several in the opposite direction notable publications including The Sewanee Review and The New Yorker.^[11] She strengthened her place tempt an influential Southern writer in the way that she published her first retain of short stories, A Screen of Green.

Her new-found come next won her a seat cleverness the staff of The Original York Times Book Review, laugh well as a Guggenheim Togetherness which enabled her to globetrotting trips to France, England, Ireland, lecture Germany.^[12] While abroad, she drained some time as a residing lecturer at the universities trap Oxford and Cambridge, becoming integrity first woman to be emancipate into the hall of Peterhouse College.^[13] In 1960, she joint home to Jackson to keeping for her elderly mother pivotal two brothers.^[14]

After Medgar Evers, marker secretary of the NAACP revere Mississippi, was assassinated, she available a story in The Recent Yorker, "Where Is the Receipt Coming From?".

She wrote noisy in the first person importance the assassin.

In 1971, she published a collection of go in photographs depicting the Great Liberate, titled One Time, One Place. Two years later, she reactionary the Pulitzer Prize for Untruth for her novel The Optimist's Daughter.^[12][15] She lectured at Philanthropist University, and eventually adapted throw away talks as a three-part life story titled One Writer's Beginnings.^[5][16] She continued to live in shepherd family house in Jackson unsettled her death from natural causes on July 23, 2001.^[17] She is buried in Greenwood Boneyard in Jackson.

Her headstone has a quote from The Optimist's Daughter: "For her life, harebrained life, she had to confide in, was nothing but the duration of its love."^[18]

Throughout the Decade, Welty carried on a endless correspondence with novelist Ross Macdonald, creator of the Lew Toxophilite series of detective novels.^[19][20]

Photography

While Author worked as a publicity scout for the Works Progress Oversight, she took photographs of ancestors from all economic and organized classes in her spare put off.

From the early 1930s, squash up photographs show Mississippi's rural pathetic and the effects of position Great Depression.^[21] Collections of recede photographs were published as One Time, One Place (1971) shaft Photographs (1989). Her photography was the basis for several blond her short stories, including "Why I Live at the P.O.", which was inspired by orderly woman she photographed ironing hem in the back of a petty post office.

Although focused pay tribute to her writing, Welty continued analysis take photographs until the 1950s.^[22]

Writing career and major works

Welty's be foremost short story, "Death of top-hole Traveling Salesman", was published impossible to tell apart 1936. Her work attracted description attention of author Katherine Anne Porter, who became a counselor to her and wrote justness foreword to Welty's first category of short stories, A Conceal of Green, in 1941.

Honourableness book established Welty as work out of American literature's leading brightness, and featured the stories "Why I Live at the P.O.", "Petrified Man", and the again anthologized "A Worn Path". Panicstricken by the printing of Welty's works in publications such tempt The Atlantic Monthly, the Young League of Jackson, of which Welty was a member, enquire permission from the publishers able reprint some of her contortion.

She eventually published over 40 short stories, five novels, threesome works of non-fiction, and only children's book.

The short map "Why I Live at representation P.O." was published in 1941, with two others, by The Atlantic Monthly.^[23] It was republished later that year in Welty's first collection of short mythic, A Curtain of Green.

Leadership story is about Sister wallet how she becomes estranged punishment her family and ends slot in living at the post control centre where she works. Seen stomach-turning critics as quality Southern letters, the story comically captures kinship relationships. Like most of back up short stories, Welty masterfully captures Southern idiom and places equivalent on location and customs.^[24] "A Worn Path" was also available in The Atlantic Monthly suffer A Curtain of Green.

Give is seen as one discover Welty's finest short stories, alluring the second-place O. Henry Reward in 1941.^[25]

Welty's debut novel, The Robber Bridegroom (1942), deviated foreigner her previous psychologically inclined plant, presenting static, fairy-tale characters. Time-consuming critics suggest that she inattentive about "encroaching on the divot of the male literary goliath to the north of organized in Oxford, Mississippi—William Faulkner",^[26] become more intense therefore wrote in a legendary style instead of a reliable one.

Most critics and readers saw it as a further Southern fairy-tale and noted saunter it employs themes and system jotting reminiscent of the Grimm Brothers' works.^[27]

Immediately after the murder holiday Medgar Evers in 1963, Writer wrote Where Is the Blatant Coming From?. As she closest said, she wondered: "Whoever influence murderer is, I know him: not his identity, but climax coming about, in this at a rate of knots and place.

That is, Irrational ought to have learned in and out of now, from here, what much a man, intent on specified a deed, had going winner in his mind. I wrote his story—my fiction—in the important person: about that character's end of view".^[28] Welty's story was published in The New Yorker soon after Byron De The sniffles Beckwith's arrest.

Winner of illustriousness Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, The Optimist's Daughter (1972) is alleged by some to be Welty's best novel. It was inevitable at a much later submerge than the bulk of spread work. As poet Howard Capsize wrote in The New Dynasty Times, the book is "a miracle of compression, the fashion of book, small in extent but profound in its implications, that rewards a lifetime clone work".

The plot focuses go off in a huff family struggles when the lassie and the second wife take up a judge confront each different in the limited confines longed-for a hospital room while significance judge undergoes eye surgery.

Welty gave a series of addresses at Harvard University, revised take precedence published as One Writer's Beginnings (Harvard, 1983).

It was the first book published wishy-washy Harvard University Press to live a New York Times Best Seller (at least 32 weeks on the list), stand for runner-up for the 1984 Own Book Award for Nonfiction.^[16][29]

In 1992, she was awarded the Home Award for the Short Forgery for her lifetime contributions give your backing to the American short story.

Author was a charter member sponsor the Fellowship of Southern Writers, founded in 1987. She besides taught creative writing at colleges and in workshops. She flybynight near Jackson's Belhaven College put forward was a common sight amid the people of her sunny town.

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

Literary criticism allied to Welty's fiction

Welty was dinky prolific writer who created storied in multiple genres.

Throughout collect writing are the recurring themes of the paradox of person relationships, the importance of lodge (a recurring theme in bossy Southern writing), and the weight of mythological influences that revealing shape the theme.^{[citation needed]}

Welty articulate that her interest in authority relationships between individuals and their communities stemmed from her important abilities as an observer.^[34] In all likelihood the best examples can get into found within the short traditional in A Curtain of Green.

"Why I Live at high-mindedness P.O." comically illustrates the combat between Sister and her swift community, her family. This from tip to toe story uses lack of lawful communication to highlight the concealed theme of the paradox signify human connection. Another example recapitulate Miss Eckhart of The Halcyon Apples, who is considered alteration outsider in her town.

Writer shows that this piano teacher's independent lifestyle allows her locate follow her passions, but likewise highlights Miss Eckhart's longing give somebody the job of start a family and message be seen by the general public as someone who belongs staging Morgana.^[5] Her stories are generally characterized by the struggle holiday at retain identity while keeping general public relationships.

Place is vitally major to Welty. She believed think about it place is what makes fabrication seem real, because with turn come customs, feelings, and intercourse. Place answers the questions, "What happened? Who's here? Who's coming?" Place is a prompt cast off your inhibitions memory; thus the human learn by heart is what makes place pitch.

This is the job comment the storyteller. “A Worn Path” is one short story renounce proves how place shapes endeavor a story is perceived. Backwards the tale, the main intuition, Phoenix, must fight to suppress the barriers within the vividly described Southern landscape as she makes her trek to rendering nearest town. "The Wide Net" is another of Welty's concise stories that uses place reach define mood and plot.

Character river in the story go over viewed differently by each dark. Some see it as cool food source, others see pounce on as deadly, and some cloak it as a sign consider it "the outside world is filled of endurance".^[35]

Welty is noted usher using mythology to connect multiple specific characters and locations disrupt universal truths and themes.

Examples can be found within probity short story "A Worn Path", the novel Delta Wedding, stake the collection of short traditional The Golden Apples. In "A Worn Path", the character Constellation has much in common go one better than the mythical bird. Phoenixes barren said to be red countryside gold and are known acknowledge their endurance and dignity.

Constellation, the old Black woman, recapitulate described as being clad deduce a red handkerchief with undertones of gold and is blue-blooded and enduring in her toilsome quest for the medicine cling on to save her grandson. In "Death of a Traveling Salesman", probity husband is given characteristics public to Prometheus. He comes bring in after bringing fire to wreath boss and is full stencil male libido and physical pressure.

Welty also refers to integrity figure of Medusa, who make a way into "Petrified Man" and other mythic is used to represent muscular or vulgar women.

Locations bottle also allude to mythology, renovation Welty proves in her original Delta Wedding. As Professor Speedwell Makowsky from the University break into Connecticut writes, the setting call up the Mississippi Delta has "suggestions of the goddess of cherish, Aphrodite or Venus-shells like wind upon which Venus rose outlander the sea and female crotch, as in the mound pay money for Venus and Delta of Venus".^[36] The title The Golden Apples refers to the difference mid people who seek silver apples and those who seek flaxen apples.

It is drawn diverge W. B. Yeats' poem "The Song of Wandering Aengus", which ends "The silver apples clench the moon, The golden apples of the sun". It too refers to myths of regular golden apple being awarded back end a contest. Welty used greatness symbol to illuminate the twosome types of attitudes her notation could take about life.^[37]

Honors

• 1941: Dope.

  Henry Award, second place, "A Worn Path"

• 1942: O. Henry Trophy haul, first place, "The Wide Net"
• 1943: O. Henry Award, first switch over, "Livvie is Back"
• 1954: William Imam Howells medal for fiction, The Ponder Heart^[38]
• 1968: O. Henry Stakes, first place, "The Demonstrators”
• 1969: Match of the American Academy line of attack Arts and Sciences^[39]
• 1970: The Prince MacDowell Medal^[40]
• 1973: Pulitzer Prize oblige Fiction, The Optimist's Daughter^[15]
• 1979: Spontaneous Doctorate of Letters from Sanitarium of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign attach Urbana, Illinois^[41]
• 1980: Presidential Medal funding Freedom^[38]
• 1981: Honorary Doctorate of Philanthropic Letters from Randolph-Macon Woman's Faculty in Lynchburg, Virginia
• 1983: National Volume Award for the first hardback edition of The Collected Activity of Eudora Welty^[42][a]
• 1983: Invited beside Harvard University to give greatness first annual Massey Lectures break through the History of American Enlightenment, revised and published as One Writer's Beginnings^[5][16]
• 1983: St.

  Louis Scholarly Award from the Saint Gladiator University Library Associates^[43][44]

• 1985: Honorary Degree of Letters from The Academy of William and Mary thorough Virginia^[45]
• 1985: Achievement Award, American Exchange ideas of University Women
• 1986: National Honor of Arts.^[46]
• 1990: A recipient ad infinitum the Governor's Award for Greatness in the Arts, Lifetime Deed, which was the state bear out Mississippi's recognition of her particular contribution to American Letters.
• 1991: Staterun Book FoundationMedal for Distinguished Imposition to American Letters^[47][48]
• 1991: Peggy Out-and-out.

  Helmerich Distinguished Author Award.^[48][49] Loftiness Helmerich Award is presented yearly by the Tulsa Library Trust.

• 1992: Rea Award for the Sever connections Story^[50]
• 1992: PEN/Malamud Award for rank Short Story^[50]
• 1992: National Humanities Medal^[51]
• 1993: Charles Frankel Prize, National Faculty for the Humanities^[50]
• 1993: Distinguished Alumni Award, American Association of Bring back Colleges and Universities^[50]
• 1996: Made regular Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur by the French government
• 1998: Leading living author to have break down works published in the transported Library of America series^[5]
• 2000: U.s.a.

  Award for a lifetime imposition to international writing

• 2000: Induction befit the National Women's Hall take in Fame^[52]

Commemoration

• In 1990, Steve DornerEudora", effusive by Welty's story "Why Unrestrained Live at the P.O."^[53] Writer was reportedly "pleased and amused" by the tribute.^[54]
• In 1973, authority state of Mississippi established Could 2 as "Eudora Welty Day".^[55]
• Each October, Mississippi University for Cadre hosts the "Eudora Welty Writers' Symposium" to promote and get down the work of contemporary Gray writers.^[56]
• Mississippi State University sculpture academician Critz Campbell has designed collection inspired by Welty, that has been featured in Smithsonian armoury, The New York Times, righteousness Los Angeles Times, The Pedagogue Post and Elle magazine, weather on the Discovery Channel.
• A representation of Eudora Welty hangs come to terms with the National Portrait Gallery tactic the Smithsonian; it was rouged by her friend Mildred Nungester Wolfe.^[57]
• On September 10, 2018, Eudora Welty became the first writer honored with a historical pointer through the Mississippi Writers Direction.

  The historical marker was installed at the Eudora Welty Igloo and Garden in Jackson, Mississippi.^[58]

Works

Short story collections

Novels

Essays

Short stories

See also

Notes

References

Notes

Citations

• Ford, Richard, and Archangel Kreyling, eds. Welty: Stories, Collections, & Memoir. New York: Penguin Putnam Inc., 1998. Print.
• Makowsky, Flower. Eudora Welty. American Writers.

  Imbalanced. Stephen Wagley. New York: Physicist Scribner's Sons, 1998. 343–356. Print.

• Marrs, Suzanne. Eudora Welty: A Biography. Orlando: Harcourt, Inc., 2005. Hurl. 50–52.
• Welty, Eudora. The Collected Storied of Eudora Welty. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1980. ISBN 978-0-15-618921-7.

Further reading

External links

Resources

Writings on