The Southern Woman: New and Selected Fiction (Modern Library)

Elizabeth Spencer is the author of more than a dozen collections of stories & novels. Born in 1921 in Carrollton, Mississippi, she currently lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. (Bowker Author Biography) Elizabeth Spencer was born on July 19, 1921, in Carrollton, Miss., to James and Mary (McCain) Spencer. Her father was a businessman and farmer. show more Her mother¿s family owned a plantation where black servants abounded long after the abolition of slavery. Elizabeth grew up in a racially segregated town of 500 and in a home filled with books. She began writing stories as a child. Elizabeth graduated from Belhaven College in Jackson, Miss., in 1942 and earned a master¿s in 1943 from Vanderbilt University in Nashville. She taught junior college classes for two years and was a reporter for The Nashville Tennessean for a year. Her well-received first novel, Fire in the Morning (1948), created a Mississippi town, with a history of its citizens, conflicts and values. Her second novel, This Crooked Way (1952), was also set in the South. From 1948 to 1951, she taught at the University of Mississippi at Oxford. After a year in New York, she returned to Oxford briefly, then won a fellowship and left for Europe. She soon released several novels including Knights and Dragons (1965) and No Place for an Angel (1967) and a collection of short stories, Ship Island and Other Stories (1968). Elizabeth Spencer taught from 1976 to 1986 at Concordia University in Montreal and from 1986 to 1992 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Elizabeth Spencer passed away ib December 22,2019 at the age of 98. (Bowker Author Biography) show less