Eudora Welty’s works are treasures of American litera­ture. When her first short-story collection was published in 1941, it heralded the arrival of a genuinely original writer who over the decades wrote hugely popular novels, novellas, essays, and a memoir. By the time she died in 2001, Welty had been given numerous literary awards and was all but shrouded in admiration.

In this definitive account, Suzanne Marrs restores Welty’s story to human proportions, tracing Welty’s life from her roots in Jackson, Mississippi, to her rise to international stature. Making generous use of Welty’s correspondence, particularly with contemporaries and admirers including Katherine Anne Porter and E. M. Forster, Marrs has crafted a fitting and fascinating tribute to one of the finest writers of the twentieth century.