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Eudora: A Writer's Life
"Your private life should be kept private," said Eudora Welty in response to a question about the relevance of biography. "My own I don't think would particularly interest anybody, for that matter. But I'd guard it; I feel strongly about that. They'd have a hard time trying to find out something about me."
This first biography of Eudora Welty makes a significant contribution to the world of letters as a chronicle of the life and achievements of one of our greatest living authors, a woman of paramount importance in the American literary canon. From a Mississippi childhood to a brief editorial career in New York, from the sale of her first short story to her beloved and bestselling memoir-- One Writer's Beginnings, which she wrote at age seventy-five--this biography charts the details and moments that contributed to the development of Welty's unique vision and unforgettable voice.
Here, too, are her literary influences, including her correspondence and meeting with the great man Faulkner, the invaluable friendships with Katherine Anne Porter and Elizabeth Bowen, the rivalry with Carson McCullers, and the small circle of lifelong confidants to whom Eudora entrusted her agent Diarmuid Russell, editor Mary Lou Aswell, and Robert Penn Warren. Ann Waldron brings together the details and moments of Welty's life, and shows how this writer's sensibility is formed and informed above all by a sense of place and purpose.
Elegant and evenhanded, respectful and authoritative, the first biography to chart the life of this national treasure is required reading for Welty fans everywhere.
This first biography of Eudora Welty makes a significant contribution to the world of letters as a chronicle of the life and achievements of one of our greatest living authors, a woman of paramount importance in the American literary canon. From a Mississippi childhood to a brief editorial career in New York, from the sale of her first short story to her beloved and bestselling memoir-- One Writer's Beginnings, which she wrote at age seventy-five--this biography charts the details and moments that contributed to the development of Welty's unique vision and unforgettable voice.
Here, too, are her literary influences, including her correspondence and meeting with the great man Faulkner, the invaluable friendships with Katherine Anne Porter and Elizabeth Bowen, the rivalry with Carson McCullers, and the small circle of lifelong confidants to whom Eudora entrusted her agent Diarmuid Russell, editor Mary Lou Aswell, and Robert Penn Warren. Ann Waldron brings together the details and moments of Welty's life, and shows how this writer's sensibility is formed and informed above all by a sense of place and purpose.
Elegant and evenhanded, respectful and authoritative, the first biography to chart the life of this national treasure is required reading for Welty fans everywhere.
416 pages, Hardcover
First published November 10, 1998
3 people are currently reading
50 people want to read
About the author
Ann Waldron
22 books18 followersAnn Waldron was born in Birmingham, Alabama and grew up on Cotton Avenue in West End. She went to Hemphill Grammar School and West End High School. She and her parents and older sister lived three blocks from the Vine Street Presbyterian Church, which they attended twice every Sunday and on Wednesday nights for prayer meeting. They spent summers on an 80-acre farm her parents owned in St. Clair County, near Cook Springs.
Ann was co-editor of her high school newspaper (the principal decreed that, although she was able enough, she was too much of a discipline problem to be the editor in chief). She did become editor of the Crimson-White, the student newspaper at the University of Alabama, from which she graduated in 1945. She attended Hudson Strode's creative writing class at the university and appeared in Blackfriars plays.
Her first job was with the Atlanta Constitution, where she was a reporter for two and a half years. It was there that she met her husband, Martin Waldron, who was then a student at Georgia Tech and who happened to see an advertisement for a copy boy's job on a bulletin board at Tech. He applied, got the job, and never looked back. He realized that he was destined to be a newspaper reporter, not an engineer, and he dropped out of Tech.
Martin later finished college at Birmingham-Southern while he worked for the Birmingham Post-Herald. Ann worked on The Progressive Farmer magazine. When Martin was hired by the Tampa Tribune the Waldrons, with their two children, Peter and Lolly, moved to Florida, where Martin first covered the citrus industry in Lakeland, and then the state capitol in Tallahassee.
The women's editor of the Tribune, knowing of Ann's journalistic experience, asked her to write a weekly feature on women in state government. By now there were two more children--Thomas William and Boojie (real name Martin Oliver Waldron III)--but she managed the one-day-a-week job happily. In fact, when she was in the hospital once, Martin wrote her column for her.
In 1960, the St. Petersburg Times hired both of them, but let them stay in Tallahassee. Martin led the team that did the series of stories exposing corruption in the management of the Florida Turnpike Authority that won the Times a Pulitzer Prize for Community Service.
Ann's column was still appearing in both the Times and the Miami Herald in 1965 when the New York Times hired Martin to open a bureau in Houston, Texas. The Waldrons moved to Houston, where Ann became book editor of the Houston Chronicle, and began writing children's books.
In 1975, the Times transferred Martin to New York and the Waldrons settled in Princeton. "We looked at suburbs on Long Island, Westchester County, Monclair, Red Bank, and Princeton, and we loved Princeton," Ann said. She took classes at Princeton University and went to work there as the associate editor of a quarterly magazine, University. She continued to write children's books, published six novels for young people, and wrote a book about art forgeries.
In 1981, Martin died, and Ann went to work fulltime for Princeton as the editor of its Campaign Bulletin. Children's books no longer held the same fascination for her--she wanted to do something different, and settled on a biography of Caroline Gordon. Biography seemed to be the ideal kind of book for her, since she could use research skills learne din journalism and bring people to life using some of the techniques of fiction I had learned. "Princeton University was an immensely helpful employer," she said. "My boss gave me every Wednesday afternoon off so I could do research in the library where Caroline Gordon's papers were held. Often in my travels for the Campaign Bulletin, I could do an interview for the biography as well."
http://www.annwaldron.com/bio.htm
Ann was co-editor of her high school newspaper (the principal decreed that, although she was able enough, she was too much of a discipline problem to be the editor in chief). She did become editor of the Crimson-White, the student newspaper at the University of Alabama, from which she graduated in 1945. She attended Hudson Strode's creative writing class at the university and appeared in Blackfriars plays.
Her first job was with the Atlanta Constitution, where she was a reporter for two and a half years. It was there that she met her husband, Martin Waldron, who was then a student at Georgia Tech and who happened to see an advertisement for a copy boy's job on a bulletin board at Tech. He applied, got the job, and never looked back. He realized that he was destined to be a newspaper reporter, not an engineer, and he dropped out of Tech.
Martin later finished college at Birmingham-Southern while he worked for the Birmingham Post-Herald. Ann worked on The Progressive Farmer magazine. When Martin was hired by the Tampa Tribune the Waldrons, with their two children, Peter and Lolly, moved to Florida, where Martin first covered the citrus industry in Lakeland, and then the state capitol in Tallahassee.
The women's editor of the Tribune, knowing of Ann's journalistic experience, asked her to write a weekly feature on women in state government. By now there were two more children--Thomas William and Boojie (real name Martin Oliver Waldron III)--but she managed the one-day-a-week job happily. In fact, when she was in the hospital once, Martin wrote her column for her.
In 1960, the St. Petersburg Times hired both of them, but let them stay in Tallahassee. Martin led the team that did the series of stories exposing corruption in the management of the Florida Turnpike Authority that won the Times a Pulitzer Prize for Community Service.
Ann's column was still appearing in both the Times and the Miami Herald in 1965 when the New York Times hired Martin to open a bureau in Houston, Texas. The Waldrons moved to Houston, where Ann became book editor of the Houston Chronicle, and began writing children's books.
In 1975, the Times transferred Martin to New York and the Waldrons settled in Princeton. "We looked at suburbs on Long Island, Westchester County, Monclair, Red Bank, and Princeton, and we loved Princeton," Ann said. She took classes at Princeton University and went to work there as the associate editor of a quarterly magazine, University. She continued to write children's books, published six novels for young people, and wrote a book about art forgeries.
In 1981, Martin died, and Ann went to work fulltime for Princeton as the editor of its Campaign Bulletin. Children's books no longer held the same fascination for her--she wanted to do something different, and settled on a biography of Caroline Gordon. Biography seemed to be the ideal kind of book for her, since she could use research skills learne din journalism and bring people to life using some of the techniques of fiction I had learned. "Princeton University was an immensely helpful employer," she said. "My boss gave me every Wednesday afternoon off so I could do research in the library where Caroline Gordon's papers were held. Often in my travels for the Campaign Bulletin, I could do an interview for the biography as well."
http://www.annwaldron.com/bio.htm
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 6, 2016
This biography of Eudora Welty is unauthorized—but not because the author wanted to say anything negative about her subject. No, indeed, Ann Waldron writes with a nearly fawning reverence. But Welty was immovably opposed to all biographies whatsoever, and furthermore told all her friends and acquaintances not to talk about her. Welty hid herself behind politeness and gentility, and it seems that these traits only grew stronger as she aged. The woman who dismissed feminism as "noisiness", and who could hardly have a worse criticism of people than to consider them crass and badly-behaved, showed the same preferences in her fiction as in her life. There is plenty of reality in Welty’s stories, but anything too raw is under the surface.
Biographers writing about long-dead people often have even less material to work with than Waldron did, drawing on public records and Welty’s scattered revelations in interviews. But they have a freedom that Waldron didn’t allow herself: she held back from thinking deeply about the evidence she gathered and drawing conclusions from it. Waldron put herself in this position by becoming too partisan for her subject. She not only dwells at length on the praise that Welty received, but defends her from people who accuse her of social complacency, and becomes indignant on her behalf whenever someone criticizes her writing. It makes for an unsatisfactory biography, even more so because Waldron is not a highly skilled writer, occasionally even falling into the tone of the kind of laudatory mini-biographies that make for such dull hearing at award ceremonies. She does do fairly well at finding the kind of small anecdotes that make a life distinctive, but she’s working from scanty material.
Eudora Welty’s life could certainly make for an interesting book. She herself pointed out that however uneventful her years seemed superficially, she had plenty going on in her mind. No life is dull if well understood. But this biography is only a partial contribution toward that understanding, tantalizing with some information, laying out a framework of facts, but ultimately remaining respectfully, politely unilluminating.
Biographers writing about long-dead people often have even less material to work with than Waldron did, drawing on public records and Welty’s scattered revelations in interviews. But they have a freedom that Waldron didn’t allow herself: she held back from thinking deeply about the evidence she gathered and drawing conclusions from it. Waldron put herself in this position by becoming too partisan for her subject. She not only dwells at length on the praise that Welty received, but defends her from people who accuse her of social complacency, and becomes indignant on her behalf whenever someone criticizes her writing. It makes for an unsatisfactory biography, even more so because Waldron is not a highly skilled writer, occasionally even falling into the tone of the kind of laudatory mini-biographies that make for such dull hearing at award ceremonies. She does do fairly well at finding the kind of small anecdotes that make a life distinctive, but she’s working from scanty material.
Eudora Welty’s life could certainly make for an interesting book. She herself pointed out that however uneventful her years seemed superficially, she had plenty going on in her mind. No life is dull if well understood. But this biography is only a partial contribution toward that understanding, tantalizing with some information, laying out a framework of facts, but ultimately remaining respectfully, politely unilluminating.
February 1, 2016
In my opinion, Eudora Welty was a wonderful writer. Born on 1909, in Jackson, Mississippi, daughter of Christian Webb Welty and Chestina Andrews Welty, Eudora Welty grew up in a close-knit and loving family. From her father she inherited a “love for all instruments that instruct and fascinate,” from her mother a passion for reading and for language. She and her brothers, she shared bonds of devotion, camaraderie, and humor. Nourished by such a supportive background, Welty became the most distinguished graduate of the Jackson Public School system. Her collegiate years, spent first at Mississippi State College for Women in Columbus; later at the University of Wisconsin, where she received her bachelor’s degree. From Wisconsin, Welty went on to graduate study at the Columbia University School of Business. After college, Welty worked at WJDX radio station, wrote society columns for the Memphis Commercial Appeal, and served as a Junior Publicity Agent for the Works Progress Administration. During these years, she took many photographs, and in 1936 and 1937 they were exhibited in New York; but they were not published as she had wished. Her first publication was instead a short story, “Death of a Traveling Salesman.” In 1936, the editor of Manuscript literary magazine called it “one of the best stories we have ever read.”
Personally, I found Eudora to be an amazing individual: talented writer, talented photographer, and a truly, thoughtful woman. Her work in photography was amazing. Her first book entitled A Curtain of Green, seventeen stories that move from the comic to the tragic, from realistic portraits to surrealistic ones, and that display a wry wit, the keen observation of detail, and a sure rendering of dialect. She translated fiction upon fiction memories of people and places she had earlier photographed, and the volume’s three stories focusing upon African American characters exemplify the empathy that was present in her photos. Toni Morrison has observed that Eudora Welty wrote “about black people in a way that few white men have ever been able to write. It’s not patronizing, not romanticizing — it’s the way they should be written about.”
In 1942, Welty decided to write a novella partaking of folklore, fairy tale, and Mississippi’s legendary history. This fiction novella was published entitled, "The Wide Net (1943),"much darker than her first novel. Her first novel, Delta Wedding set in Mississippi Delta of 1923, though published in 1946, the book was originally criticized as a nostalgic portrait of the plantation South, but critical opinion has since counteracted such views, seeing in the novel, to use Albert Devlin’s words, the “probing for a humane order.” Her next book was "The Golden Apples (1949)" includes seven interlocking stories that trace life in the fictional Morgana, Mississippi, from the turn of the century until the late 1940s. She found that it was neither novel nor story collection. Instead, perhaps the greatest triumph of her distinguished career, an unmatched example of the story cycle. After Welty traveled to Europe and drew upon her European experiences in two stories she would eventually group with “Circe,” a story narrated by the witch-goddess, and with four stories set in the American South. And before she pulled The Bride of the Innisfallen and Other Stories (1955) together, she published The Ponder Heart (1954), an extended dramatic monologue delivered by Edna Earle, a character who truly is a character.
Welty had produced seven distinctive books in fourteen years, but that rate of production came to a startling halt. Personal tragedies forced her to put writing on the back burner for more than a decade. Then in 1970 she graced the publishing world with Losing Battles, a long novel narrated largely through the conversation of the aunts, uncles, and cousins attending a rambunctious 1930s family reunion. Two years later came a taut, spare novel set in the late 1960s and describing the experience of loss and grief which had so recently been her own. Welty would uncharacteristically incorporate a good bit of biographical detail in The Optimist’s Daughter, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize.
Welty’s exploration of such different subjects and techniques involved, more than art for art’s sake. In her essay, “Words into Fiction,” she describes fiction as “a personal act of vision.” She does not suggest that the artist’s vision conveys a truth which we must all accept. Instead, she suggests, the artist, must look squarely at the mysteries of human experiences without trying to resolve them. Eudora Welty’s ability to reveal rather than explain mystery is what first drew Richard Ford to her work. It drew Reynolds Price as well. Price, though, focuses not on the term mystery, but on the complexity of her vision. He writes that Eudora is not “the mild, sonorous, ‘affirmative’ kind of artist whom America loves to clasp to its bosom,” but is instead a writer with “a granite core in every tale: as complete and unassailable an image of human relations as any in our art, tragic of necessity but also comic.”
Welty’s achievements include more than her fiction. Her early photographs eventually appeared in book form: Her photograph book One Time, One Place was published in 1971, and more photographs have subsequently been published in books titled Photographs (1989), Country Churchyards (2000), and Eudora Welty as Photographer (2009). Her essays and book reviews were collected in the 1978 volume titled The Eye of the Story, and her autobiography One Writer’s Beginnings, published in 1984 by Harvard University Press, was a nationwide best seller.
For a time during her last three decades, Welty periodically worked on fiction, but completed nothing to her own high standards, standards that made her a literary celebrity. She appeared on televised interviews, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the French Legion of Honor, served as the subject of a BBC documentary, and was chosen as the first living writer to be published in the Library of America series. After a short illness and as the result of cardio-pulmonary failure, Eudora Welty died on 23 July 2001, in Jackson, Mississippi, her lifelong home, where she is buried.
IMO -- she was an amazing woman, truly before her time.
Personally, I found Eudora to be an amazing individual: talented writer, talented photographer, and a truly, thoughtful woman. Her work in photography was amazing. Her first book entitled A Curtain of Green, seventeen stories that move from the comic to the tragic, from realistic portraits to surrealistic ones, and that display a wry wit, the keen observation of detail, and a sure rendering of dialect. She translated fiction upon fiction memories of people and places she had earlier photographed, and the volume’s three stories focusing upon African American characters exemplify the empathy that was present in her photos. Toni Morrison has observed that Eudora Welty wrote “about black people in a way that few white men have ever been able to write. It’s not patronizing, not romanticizing — it’s the way they should be written about.”
In 1942, Welty decided to write a novella partaking of folklore, fairy tale, and Mississippi’s legendary history. This fiction novella was published entitled, "The Wide Net (1943),"much darker than her first novel. Her first novel, Delta Wedding set in Mississippi Delta of 1923, though published in 1946, the book was originally criticized as a nostalgic portrait of the plantation South, but critical opinion has since counteracted such views, seeing in the novel, to use Albert Devlin’s words, the “probing for a humane order.” Her next book was "The Golden Apples (1949)" includes seven interlocking stories that trace life in the fictional Morgana, Mississippi, from the turn of the century until the late 1940s. She found that it was neither novel nor story collection. Instead, perhaps the greatest triumph of her distinguished career, an unmatched example of the story cycle. After Welty traveled to Europe and drew upon her European experiences in two stories she would eventually group with “Circe,” a story narrated by the witch-goddess, and with four stories set in the American South. And before she pulled The Bride of the Innisfallen and Other Stories (1955) together, she published The Ponder Heart (1954), an extended dramatic monologue delivered by Edna Earle, a character who truly is a character.
Welty had produced seven distinctive books in fourteen years, but that rate of production came to a startling halt. Personal tragedies forced her to put writing on the back burner for more than a decade. Then in 1970 she graced the publishing world with Losing Battles, a long novel narrated largely through the conversation of the aunts, uncles, and cousins attending a rambunctious 1930s family reunion. Two years later came a taut, spare novel set in the late 1960s and describing the experience of loss and grief which had so recently been her own. Welty would uncharacteristically incorporate a good bit of biographical detail in The Optimist’s Daughter, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize.
Welty’s exploration of such different subjects and techniques involved, more than art for art’s sake. In her essay, “Words into Fiction,” she describes fiction as “a personal act of vision.” She does not suggest that the artist’s vision conveys a truth which we must all accept. Instead, she suggests, the artist, must look squarely at the mysteries of human experiences without trying to resolve them. Eudora Welty’s ability to reveal rather than explain mystery is what first drew Richard Ford to her work. It drew Reynolds Price as well. Price, though, focuses not on the term mystery, but on the complexity of her vision. He writes that Eudora is not “the mild, sonorous, ‘affirmative’ kind of artist whom America loves to clasp to its bosom,” but is instead a writer with “a granite core in every tale: as complete and unassailable an image of human relations as any in our art, tragic of necessity but also comic.”
Welty’s achievements include more than her fiction. Her early photographs eventually appeared in book form: Her photograph book One Time, One Place was published in 1971, and more photographs have subsequently been published in books titled Photographs (1989), Country Churchyards (2000), and Eudora Welty as Photographer (2009). Her essays and book reviews were collected in the 1978 volume titled The Eye of the Story, and her autobiography One Writer’s Beginnings, published in 1984 by Harvard University Press, was a nationwide best seller.
For a time during her last three decades, Welty periodically worked on fiction, but completed nothing to her own high standards, standards that made her a literary celebrity. She appeared on televised interviews, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the French Legion of Honor, served as the subject of a BBC documentary, and was chosen as the first living writer to be published in the Library of America series. After a short illness and as the result of cardio-pulmonary failure, Eudora Welty died on 23 July 2001, in Jackson, Mississippi, her lifelong home, where she is buried.
IMO -- she was an amazing woman, truly before her time.
February 21, 2015
Ann Waldron has become my idea of a paparazzo of the biographical set. The information set forth was in depth, redundantly so. Her personal commentary throughout was mostly a chore to read through as it mainly centered on her immaturely pricked pride that Welty didn't want her to write this biography or to give her any personal information to help in the writing of it.
Annoyance at the biographer aside, Welty's life and work is quite fascinating; which is the only reason this book received two stars. Though I find that I couldn't care less, unlike the biographer, who she flirted with or fell for and what said person(s)' sexual orientation was. (Why is this such a repetitive refrain in this book? Sure, healthy conjecture can be interesting, but repeated conjecture is hardly rewarding.) So, the effort spent reading this isn't for nothing... but it's definitely a bit of an effort all the same.
Annoyance at the biographer aside, Welty's life and work is quite fascinating; which is the only reason this book received two stars. Though I find that I couldn't care less, unlike the biographer, who she flirted with or fell for and what said person(s)' sexual orientation was. (Why is this such a repetitive refrain in this book? Sure, healthy conjecture can be interesting, but repeated conjecture is hardly rewarding.) So, the effort spent reading this isn't for nothing... but it's definitely a bit of an effort all the same.
September 26, 2024
I enjoyed reading about the writer's life, but the struggle of getting printed, always making just enough so you could pay for a room to travel and write is a little out of my comfort zone. She was very loyal to her family and friends. She lifted up her town of Jackson, Mississippi. I enjoyed reading about the time of History.
August 21, 2023
Eudora was right; her life story is dull, especially since this is unauthorized and basically a timeline. Time better spent reading Welty.
January 20, 2009
I was skeptical at first about reading this because the author did not have the cooperation of Eudora Welty or any of her associates. But I love Eudora Welty and wanted to learn more about her. Although it is written from other written sources rather than interviews, I learned a lot and have thought about it often. Some of the inspirations and background for her short stories and novels is highlighted which makes me want to go back and re-read some of Welty's works.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews