First Lady of Southern Literature

First Lady of Southern Literature

Born April 13, 1909, Welty spent what she describes as an idyllic childhood in Jackson, Mississippi with her two brothers, Edward and Walter, and her parents, Chestina, a schoolteacher, and Christian, an insurance executive. Eudora was the oldest sibling as well as the only girl in the family. Welty lived in her family's homes in Jackson for most of her ninety-two years. (Literary Cavalcade 26-30) Welty attended college for two years at Mississippi State College for Women and then spent several years at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and a year in New York City, studying advertising at the Columbia University business school. She had to return to Jackson, Mississippi in 1931 because of her father died from leukemia, and she worked at a local radio station and wrote about the Jackson social scene for the Memphis, Tennessee, "Commercial Appeal", a newspaper circulated throughout Northwest Mississippi. (The Eudora Welty Foundation)

From 1933 to 1936 she served as a publicity agent for the Works Progress Administration throughout rural Mississippi. This is where she also took her most memorable photographs (published in 1989). She began to publish fiction in 1936, was on staff of the New York Times Book Review in 1944, and traveled to France, Italy, England and Ireland in 1949-50, funded by a Guggenheim Fellowship. (Eudora Welty)

L. Hamm 2

During her writing life she held extended residences at a number of universities, including Oxford and Cambridge (she was the first woman to enter Peterhouse College).

Finally, in June of 1936, Eudora Welty's career sparked with her first published short story, "Death of a Traveling Salesman," which appeared in a small magazine called "Manuscript". Welty's career began to flourish. Her first novel The Robber Bridegroom was published (Biography of Eudora Welty). A few years later her second novel Delta Wedding was published in 1946. Just as Welty's writings were getting national attention, she was hit with family tragedy. At the age of forty-six, it became necessary for Welty to take care of her family and put her work aside. Both of her brothers were diagnosed with severe arthritis, while her mother was paralyzed by a stroke (Eudora Welty Foundation). Welty spent the next fifteen years caring for her helpless