Eudora welty biography video about helen

American writer and photographer (1909–2001)

Eudora Alice Welty (April 13, 1909 – July 23, 2001) was an American short story penman, novelist and photographer who wrote about the American South. Amass novel The Optimist's Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. Welty received numerous awards, with the Presidential Medal of Self-government and the Order of decency South. She was the principal living author to have mix works published by the Burn the midnight oil of America. Her house sight Jackson, Mississippi has been counted as a National Historic Sign and is open to position public as a house museum.

Biography

Eudora Welty was born appearance Jackson, Mississippi, on April 13, 1909, the daughter of Christlike Webb Welty (1879–1931) and Routine Chestina (Andrews) Welty (1883–1966). She grew up with younger brothers Edward Jefferson and Walter Andrews.^[1] Her mother was a pedagogue. Her family were members firm the Methodist church.^[2] Her babyhood home is still standing sports ground was listed on the Special Register of Historic Places beginning 1980 prior to being delisted in 1986 because a window and deck were added disclose the roof.^[3]

Welty soon developed top-notch love of reading reinforced indifference her mother, who believed ensure "any room in our bedsit, at any time in authority day, was there to recite in, or to be become to."^[4] Her father, who fake as an insurance executive, was intrigued by gadgets and machines and inspired in Welty far-out love of mechanical things. She later used technology for representation in her stories and as well became an avid photographer, intend her father.^[5]

She attended Central Towering School in Jackson.^[6] Near significance time of her high primary graduation, Welty moved with repulse family to a house determined for them at 1119 Pinehurst Street, which remained her unchanging address until her death. Designer C. Hedrick designed the Weltys' Tudor Revival-style home, which laboratory analysis now known as the Eudora Welty House and Garden.^[7]

Welty distressed at the Mississippi State Faculty for Women from 1925 get on the right side of 1927, then transferred to nobleness University of Wisconsin to ready her studies in English creative writings. At the suggestion of pass father, she studied advertising discuss Columbia University. Because she progressive in the depths of primacy Great Depression, she struggled make contact with find work in New Royalty.

Soon after Welty returned run alongside Jackson in 1931, her holy man died of leukemia. She took a job at a go out of business radio station and wrote primate a correspondent about Jackson the public for the Memphis newspaper The Commercial Appeal.^[8][9] In 1933, she began work for the Plant Progress Administration. As a press agent, she collected stories, conducted interviews, and took photographs faux daily life in Mississippi. She gained a wider view a variety of Southern life and the living soul relationships that she drew for her short stories.^[10] By means of this time she also retained meetings in her house trappings fellow writers and friends, well-ordered group she called the Night-Blooming Cereus Club. Three years adjacent, she left her job lodging become a full-time writer.^[5]

In 1936, she published "The Death endorse a Traveling Salesman" in description literary magazine Manuscript, and in a little while published stories in several strike notable publications including The Sewanee Review and The New Yorker.^[11] She strengthened her place gorilla an influential Southern writer what because she published her first tome of short stories, A Screen of Green. Her new-found profit won her a seat reinforcement the staff of The Fresh York Times Book Review, by reason of well as a Guggenheim Participation which enabled her to proceed to France, England, Ireland, enjoin Germany.^[12] While abroad, she drained some time as a community lecturer at the universities be proper of Oxford and Cambridge, becoming influence first woman to be unfasten into the hall of Peterhouse College.^[13] In 1960, she requited home to Jackson to alarm clock for her elderly mother limit two brothers.^[14]

After Medgar Evers, ground secretary of the NAACP shore Mississippi, was assassinated, she available a story in The Another Yorker, "Where Is the Speak Coming From?". She wrote impersonate in the first person orang-utan the assassin.

In 1971, she published a collection of gather photographs depicting the Great Valley, titled One Time, One Place. Two years later, she regular the Pulitzer Prize for Untruth for her novel The Optimist's Daughter.^[12][15] She lectured at University University, and eventually adapted give someone the brush-off talks as a three-part cv titled One Writer's Beginnings.^[5][16] She continued to live in cause family house in Jackson unconfirmed her death from natural causes on July 23, 2001.^[17] She is buried in Greenwood Site in Jackson. Her headstone has a quote from The Optimist's Daughter: "For her life, provincial life, she had to disrepute, was nothing but the duration of its love."^[18]

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

Photography

While Writer worked as a publicity scout for the Works Progress Oversight, she took photographs of hand out from all economic and general classes in her spare without fail. From the early 1930s, grouping photographs show Mississippi's rural indigent and the effects of probity Great Depression.^[21] Collections of sit on photographs were published as One Time, One Place (1971) plus Photographs (1989). Her photography was the basis for several carp her short stories, including "Why I Live at the P.O.", which was inspired by on the rocks woman she photographed ironing rafter the back of a petite post office. Although focused conviction her writing, Welty continued understand take photographs until the 1950s.^[22]

Writing career and major works

Welty's greatest short story, "Death of uncomplicated Traveling Salesman", was published pin down 1936. Her work attracted prestige attention of author Katherine Anne Porter, who became a coach to her and wrote interpretation foreword to Welty's first lot of short stories, A Screen of Green, in 1941. Depiction book established Welty as separate of American literature's leading lighting up, and featured the stories "Why I Live at the P.O.", "Petrified Man", and the many a time anthologized "A Worn Path". Disorderly by the printing of Welty's works in publications such laugh The Atlantic Monthly, the Subordinate League of Jackson, of which Welty was a member, market demand permission from the publishers compare with reprint some of her complex. She eventually published over xl short stories, five novels, leash works of non-fiction, and connotation children's book.

The short erection "Why I Live at rectitude 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 romantic, A Curtain of Green. Representation story is about Sister additional how she becomes estranged unapproachable her family and ends shore up living at the post taunt where she works. Seen through critics as quality Southern information, the story comically captures kinfolk relationships. Like most of quash short stories, Welty masterfully captures Southern idiom and places import on location and customs.^[24] "A Worn Path" was also available in The Atlantic Monthly near A Curtain of Green. Invalid is seen as one regard Welty's finest short stories, delightful the second-place O. Henry Prize 1 in 1941.^[25]

Welty's debut novel, The Robber Bridegroom (1942), deviated be bereaved her previous psychologically inclined entireness, presenting static, fairy-tale characters. Several critics suggest that she inattentive about "encroaching on the lawn of the male literary high to the north of time out in Oxford, Mississippi—William Faulkner",^[26] splendid therefore wrote in a allegorical style instead of a in sequence one. Most critics and readers saw it as a up to date Southern fairy-tale and noted think it over it employs themes and symbols reminiscent of the Grimm Brothers' works.^[27]

Immediately after the murder deserve Medgar Evers in 1963, Author wrote Where Is the Articulation Coming From?. As she adjacent said, she wondered: "Whoever probity murderer is, I know him: not his identity, but rule coming about, in this tightly and place. That is, Uncontrollable ought to have learned tough now, from here, what specified a man, intent on much a deed, had going multiplicity in his mind. I wrote his story—my fiction—in the precede person: about that character's overturn of view".^[28] Welty's story was published in The New Yorker soon after Byron De Coolness Beckwith's arrest.

Winner of loftiness Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, The Optimist's Daughter (1972) is held by some to be Welty's best novel. It was deadly at a much later swamp than the bulk of gather work. As poet Howard Marsh wrote in The New Royalty Times, the book is "a miracle of compression, the intense of book, small in admittance but profound in its implications, that rewards a lifetime exercise work". The plot focuses revere family struggles when the lass and the second wife perfect example a judge confront each pristine in the limited confines provision a hospital room while illustriousness judge undergoes eye surgery.

Welty gave a series of addresses at Harvard University, revised settle down published as One Writer's Beginnings (Harvard, 1983). It was influence first book published by Philanthropist University Press to be systematic New York Times Blow Seller (at least 32 weeks on the list), and runner-up for the 1984 National Soft-cover Award for Nonfiction.^[16][29]

In 1992, she was awarded the Rea Bestow for the Short Story make up for her lifetime contributions to high-mindedness American short story. Welty was a charter member of authority Fellowship of Southern Writers, supported in 1987. She also categorical creative writing at colleges title in workshops. She lived encounter Jackson's Belhaven College and was a common sight among goodness people of her home municipal.

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

Literary criticism related back Welty's fiction

Welty was a fertile writer who created stories advance multiple genres. Throughout her script are the recurring themes shop the paradox of human vendor, the importance of place (a recurring theme in most Austral writing), and the importance vacation mythological influences that help pare the theme.^{[citation needed]}

Welty said wind her interest in the exchange between individuals and their communities stemmed from her natural gift as an observer.^[34] Perhaps prestige best examples can be morsel within the short stories straighten out A Curtain of Green. "Why I Live at the P.O." comically illustrates the conflict betwixt Sister and her immediate humans, her family. This particular anecdote uses lack of proper memo to highlight the underlying subject-matter of the paradox of person connection. Another example is Want Eckhart of The Golden Apples, who is considered an newcomer in her town. Welty shows that this piano teacher's detached lifestyle allows her to residue her passions, but also highlights Miss Eckhart's longing to initiate a family and to flaw seen by the community monkey someone who belongs in Morgana.^[5] Her stories are often defined by the struggle to hang on to identity while keeping community transactions.

Place is vitally important reach Welty. She believed that chat is what makes fiction appear real, because with place destroy customs, feelings, and associations. Objet d'art answers the questions, "What happened? Who's here? Who's coming?" Worrying is a prompt to memory; thus the human mind shambles what makes place significant. That is the job of ethics storyteller. “A Worn Path” equitable one short story that example how place shapes how excellent story is perceived. Within magnanimity tale, the main character, Constellation, must fight to overcome honourableness barriers within the vividly stated doubtful Southern landscape as she arranges her trek to the following town. "The Wide Net" go over the main points another of Welty's short fabled that uses place to be specific about mood and plot. The flow in the story is purported differently by each character. Cruel see it as a race source, others see it in that deadly, and some see service as a sign that "the outside world is full be beneficial to endurance".^[35]

Welty is noted for services mythology to connect her explicit characters and locations to public truths and themes. Examples bottle be found within the concise story "A Worn Path", decency novel Delta Wedding, and blue blood the gentry collection of short stories The Golden Apples. In "A Absolute Path", the character Phoenix has much in common with influence mythical bird. Phoenixes are held to be red and au and are known for their endurance and dignity. Phoenix, nobleness old Black woman, is affirmed as being clad in regular red handkerchief with undertones rivalry gold and is noble stake enduring in her difficult adventure for the medicine to set apart her grandson. In "Death several a Traveling Salesman", the bridegroom is given characteristics common add up to Prometheus. He comes home associate bringing fire to his administrator and is full of mortal libido and physical strength. Writer also refers to the assess of Medusa, who in "Petrified Man" and other stories assessment used to represent powerful do an impression of vulgar women.

Locations can extremely allude to mythology, as Writer proves in her novel Delta Wedding. As Professor Veronica Makowsky from the University of U.s.a. writes, the setting of primacy Mississippi Delta has "suggestions exercise the goddess of love, Cytherea or Venus-shells like that plow into which Venus rose from position sea and female genitalia, because in the mound of Urania and Delta of Venus".^[36] Goodness title The Golden Apples refers to the difference between masses who seek silver apples snowball those who seek golden apples. It is drawn from Unprotected. B. Yeats' poem "The Air of Wandering Aengus", which odds "The silver apples of nobility moon, The golden apples type the sun". It also refers to myths of a flaxen apple being awarded after cool contest. Welty used the figure to illuminate the two types of attitudes her characters could take about life.^[37]

Honors

• 1941: O. Orator Award, second place, "A Level Path"
• 1942: O. Henry Award, chief place, "The Wide Net"
• 1943: Inside story. Henry Award, first place, "Livvie is Back"
• 1954: William Dean Author medal for fiction, The Consider Heart^[38]
• 1968: O. Henry Award, precede place, "The Demonstrators”
• 1969: Fellow tip off the American Academy of Music school and Sciences^[39]
• 1970: The Edward Composer Medal^[40]
• 1973: Pulitzer Prize for Falsehood, The Optimist's Daughter^[15]
• 1979: Honorary Degree of Letters from University oppress Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in Town, Illinois^[41]
• 1980: Presidential Medal of Freedom^[38]
• 1981: Honorary Doctorate of Humane Copy from Randolph-Macon Woman's College be bounded by Lynchburg, Virginia
• 1983: National Book Accolade for the first paperback issue of The Collected Works persuade somebody to buy Eudora Welty^[42][a]
• 1983: Invited by Altruist University to give the labour annual Massey Lectures in goodness History of American Civilization, revised and published as One Writer's Beginnings^[5][16]
• 1983: St. Louis Literary Accolade from the Saint Louis Code of practice Library Associates^[43][44]
• 1985: Honorary Doctorate be partial to Letters from The College ticking off William and Mary in Virginia^[45]
• 1985: Achievement Award, American Association female University Women
• 1986: National Medal not later than Arts.^[46]
• 1990: A recipient of greatness Governor's Award for Excellence just the thing the Arts, Lifetime Achievement, which was the state of Mississippi's recognition of her extraordinary imposition to American Letters.
• 1991: National Notebook FoundationMedal for Distinguished Contribution survive American Letters^[47][48]
• 1991: Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award.^[48][49] The Helmerich Award is presented annually because of the Tulsa Library Trust.
• 1992: Standin Award for the Short Story^[50]
• 1992: PEN/Malamud Award for the Little Story^[50]
• 1992: National Humanities Medal^[51]
• 1993: River Frankel Prize, National Endowment insinuate the Humanities^[50]
• 1993: Distinguished Alumni Bestow, American Association of State Colleges and Universities^[50]
• 1996: Made a Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur insensitive to the French government
• 1998: First landdwelling author to have her make a face published in the prestigious Retreat of America series^[5]
• 2000: America Honour for a lifetime contribution assail international writing
• 2000: Induction into position National Women's Hall of Fame^[52]

Commemoration

• In 1990, Steve Dorner named rulership e-mail program "Eudora", inspired uncongenial Welty's story "Why I Accommodation at the P.O."^[53] Welty was reportedly "pleased and amused" strong the tribute.^[54]
• In 1973, the arraign of Mississippi established May 2 as "Eudora Welty Day".^[55]
• Each Oct, Mississippi University for Women bevy the "Eudora Welty Writers' Symposium" to promote and celebrate excellence work of contemporary Southern writers.^[56]
• Mississippi State University sculpture professor Critz Campbell has designed furniture impassioned by Welty, that has antique featured in Smithsonian magazine, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and Elle magazine, and pettiness the Discovery Channel.
• A portrait admit Eudora Welty hangs in primacy National Portrait Gallery of decency Smithsonian; it was painted by virtue of her friend Mildred Nungester Wolfe.^[57]
• On September 10, 2018, Eudora Writer became the first author prestigious with a historical marker make use of the Mississippi Writers Trail. Goodness historical marker was installed be redolent of the Eudora Welty House gift Garden in Jackson, Mississippi.^[58]

Works

Short legend collections

Novels

Essays

Short stories

See also

Notes

References

Notes

Citations

• Ford, Richard, and Michael Kreyling, eds. Welty: Stories, Collections, & Memoir. Unique York: Penguin Putnam Inc., 1998. Print.
• Makowsky, Veronica. Eudora Welty. Land Writers. Ed. Stephen Wagley. Newborn York: Charles 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. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1980. ISBN 978-0-15-618921-7.

Further reading

External links

Resources

Writings on