- Welty, Eudora Alice
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▪ 2002American short-story writer and novelist (b. April 13, 1909, Jackson, Miss.—d. July 23, 2001, Jackson), was known for the lyricism, perception, wit, and humanity that infused her works. Although she wrote primarily about the inhabitants of her native Deep South and their everyday lives, her characters and stories had an appealing universality in their depictions of human emotions and relationships, and her stories were included in numerous anthologies. Welty was educated at Mississippi State College (now University) for Women (1926–27), the University of Wisconsin (B.A., 1929), and the Columbia University Graduate School of Business (1930–31), New York City, but returned home when her father died in 1931. In 1933 she began traveling throughout Mississippi as a publicity agent for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), interviewing and photographing people of all classes and writing stories. Welty had her first story, “Death of a Traveling Salesman,” published in 1936 in Manuscript, a small literary magazine, and more stories appeared in such publications as the Southern Review, The Atlantic Monthly, and The New Yorker. One of these, “Why I Live at the P.O.,” became a classic, and Welty was especially pleased that it inspired Steven Dorner to name the Eudora e-mail program after her. For another story, “A Worn Path,” she won the first of her six O. Henry Awards. A collection of short stories, A Curtain of Green (1941), was Welty's first book. Among those that followed were the novella The Robber Bridegroom (1942), which was later adapted for the musical stage; Delta Wedding (1946), her first full-length novel; The Ponder Heart (1954), an adaptation of which became a Broadway hit; and the autobiographical The Optimist's Daughter (1972), for which she received a Pulitzer Prize. Welty was also noted for her photographs, which reflected the dignity and humanity of their subjects. A collection of pictures she took while with the WPA was exhibited in New York City in 1936 and years later achieved greater acclaim; 100 of the photos were published in One Time, One Place: Mississippi in the Depression in 1971, and many were included in a book of more than 200 pictures, Eudora Welty Photographs (1989). Another book of images, Country Churchyards (2000), was her last published work. Welty counted among her many awards the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1980) and the French Legion of Honour (1996), and she became (1998) the first living writer to be included in the Library of America series.
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Universalium. 2010.