2001, ISBN: 9780156030632

"Honored for both her literary output and her generous spirit, Eudora Welty was probably the best loved writer in America. To read this biography is to understand why."--"The Plain Dealer… Meer...

"Honored for both her literary output and her generous spirit, Eudora Welty was probably the best loved writer in America. To read this biography is to understand why."--"The Plain Dealer" (Cleveland) Eudora Welty created some of the finest short fiction ever written. First published in the 1940s, her stories introduced a genuinely original voice, and by the time of her death in 2001 she had received nearly every literary award possible, including the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. To many she was not just a writer but an icon.The Eudora Welty who emerges in this affectionate biography is not the sequestered spinster she was once thought to be but an inveterate traveler and a shrewd observer of her times. Suzanne Marrs, who shared a close friendship with Welty in her later years, makes effective use of the material to which she was given access, including letters to and from the two great loves of Welty's life and correspondence with contemporaries such as Katherine Anne Porter, E. M. Forster, and Elizabeth Bowen. The result is a complete and absorbing portrait of a woman and a writer passionately engaged with her world. "Ms. Marrs embraces Welty's own largely joyous take on her life even while probing its difficulties and disappointments."--"The Wall Street Journal" "In Suzanne Marrs, Eudora Welty has a responsible and thorough biographer who looked back, with a smile to be sure, but with a steady understanding as well." -- "The Times-Picayune" (New Orleans) Suzanne Marrs is the author of "One Writer's Imagination: The Fiction of Eudora Welty" and a recipient of the Phoenix Award for Distinguished Welty Scholarship. She is professor of English at Millsaps College and lives in Jackson, Mississippi. Media > Book, [PU: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich]<