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The Bride of the Innisfallen and Other Stories
This collection combines stories set in Welty's special province, the rural South, with stories having a European locale. This gives a wider range to her fiction and demonstrates the remarkable talent of one of the finest short-story writers of our time. "Humorous, piquant, graceful" (Louis D. Rubin, Jr., Sewanee Review).
216 pages, Paperback
First published June 15, 1955
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226 people want to read
About the author
Eudora Welty
239 books1,016 followersEudora Alice Welty was an award-winning American author who wrote short stories and novels about the American South. Her book The Optimist's Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973 and she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among numerous awards. She was the first living author to have her works published by the Library of America.
Welty was born in Jackson, Mississippi, and lived a significant portion of her life in the city's Belhaven neighborhood, where her home has been preserved. She was educated at the Mississippi State College for Women (now called Mississippi University for Women), the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Columbia Business School. While at Columbia University, where she was the captain of the women's polo team, Welty was a regular at Romany Marie's café in 1930.
During the 1930s, Welty worked as a photographer for the Works Progress Administration, a job that sent her all over the state of Mississippi photographing people from all economic and social classes. Collections of her photographs are One Time, One Place and Photographs.
Welty's true love was literature, not photography, and she soon devoted her energy to writing fiction. Her first short story, "Death of a Traveling Salesman," appeared in 1936. Her work attracted the attention of Katherine Anne Porter, who became a mentor to her and wrote the foreword to Welty's first collection of short stories, A Curtain of Green, in 1941. The book immediately established Welty as one of American literature's leading lights and featured the legendary and oft-anthologized stories "Why I Live at the P.O.," "Petrified Man," and "A Worn Path." Her novel, The Optimist's Daughter, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973.
In 1992, Welty was awarded the Rea Award for the Short Story for her lifetime contributions to the American short story, and was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, founded in 1987. In her later life, she lived near Belhaven College in Jackson, Mississippi, where, despite her fame, she was still a common sight among the people of her hometown.
Eudora Welty died of pneumonia in Jackson, Mississippi, at the age of 92, and is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Jackson.
Excerpted and adopted from Wikipedia.
Welty was born in Jackson, Mississippi, and lived a significant portion of her life in the city's Belhaven neighborhood, where her home has been preserved. She was educated at the Mississippi State College for Women (now called Mississippi University for Women), the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Columbia Business School. While at Columbia University, where she was the captain of the women's polo team, Welty was a regular at Romany Marie's café in 1930.
During the 1930s, Welty worked as a photographer for the Works Progress Administration, a job that sent her all over the state of Mississippi photographing people from all economic and social classes. Collections of her photographs are One Time, One Place and Photographs.
Welty's true love was literature, not photography, and she soon devoted her energy to writing fiction. Her first short story, "Death of a Traveling Salesman," appeared in 1936. Her work attracted the attention of Katherine Anne Porter, who became a mentor to her and wrote the foreword to Welty's first collection of short stories, A Curtain of Green, in 1941. The book immediately established Welty as one of American literature's leading lights and featured the legendary and oft-anthologized stories "Why I Live at the P.O.," "Petrified Man," and "A Worn Path." Her novel, The Optimist's Daughter, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973.
In 1992, Welty was awarded the Rea Award for the Short Story for her lifetime contributions to the American short story, and was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, founded in 1987. In her later life, she lived near Belhaven College in Jackson, Mississippi, where, despite her fame, she was still a common sight among the people of her hometown.
Eudora Welty died of pneumonia in Jackson, Mississippi, at the age of 92, and is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Jackson.
Excerpted and adopted from Wikipedia.
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
Want to read
September 29, 2023Contains the stories:
No Place for You, My Love -
The Burning -
Bride of the Innisfallen -
Ladies in Spring -
Circe -
Kin -
Going to Naples -
No Place for You, My Love -
The Burning -
Bride of the Innisfallen -
Ladies in Spring -
Circe -
Kin -
Going to Naples -
November 8, 2013
I didn’t think I’d read the title story (I don’t remember doing so, anyway), but I think I must have, because I remembered a line word for word when I ran across it again. A woman is carrying a baby past a train window: ”It was a red-haired boy with queenly jowls, squinting in at the world as if to say, ‘Will what has just been said be very kindly repeated?’ ” I love Welty’s talent for description such as that. In terms of plot, some of the stories are a little lackluster, but it doesn’t even really matter too much when you have these images to enjoy.
October 30, 2020
I love Eudora.
No Place for You My Love: loneliness of a man and woman out of town on a business trip.
The Burning: Sherman’s march. Despair.
Title story: not about the bride but about travelers going to or running from family.
Ladies in Spring: things are dry. The ladies step.
Circe: a tale of the Odyssey.
Kin: a family that’s all messed up
No Place for You My Love: loneliness of a man and woman out of town on a business trip.
The Burning: Sherman’s march. Despair.
Title story: not about the bride but about travelers going to or running from family.
Ladies in Spring: things are dry. The ladies step.
Circe: a tale of the Odyssey.
Kin: a family that’s all messed up
October 18, 2020
I expected excellent writing, set in early 20th century Mississippi. A few stories met that description, but others occured on a train, on a passenger ship to Italy, and a haunting one during the Civil War. Quite a collection!
Want to read
June 20, 2009Palate cleanser for Infinite Summer.
Read
October 26, 2020Includes short stories The Bride of the Innisfallen, No Place for you My love, The burning, Ladies in Spring, Circe, Kin, Going to Naples
December 17, 2020
Welty’s powers of description make her stories come alive. She gets inside her characters thoughts and personalities so well. I enjoyed these very much.
November 10, 2015
This is a strong collection of stories by Welty. They tend to be a bit longer than her traditional stories but suffer no harm from it. Not every story is perfect, but some show the author's great gift for time and place.
No Place For You, My Love owns the book. A story about a man who, having just met a woman at a restaurant, takes this woman, this married woman, on a trip down the highway as far as you can go. Beyond New Orleans they go, until they reach the veritable end of the road and the beginning of the Gulf of Mexico. On the way we meet some of the characters who live in this zone between civilization and the ocean.
The Bride of Innisfallen works as an example of how much you can advance a story through dialogue. A group of people gather on a train in England heading north to Ireland. We learn much about them in the process
Going to Naples is my favorite story in the collection. In this story a group of people, unrelated having just met, are on a journey across the Atlantic back to their homes on the Italian peninsula. Some are older immigrants returning to die, some are just visiting the home of their birth, while others are just plYing tourist. A young girl is accompanied by her Mother and we watch her shipboard romance develop. A great illustration of the immigrant experience, showing that the great assimilation that we are told that the European immigrants always practiced was perhaps not so compete.
And, in what might have been her most controversial story, Where is the Voice Coming From, we view an unnamed man as he sets out to, and succeeds in, his plan to assassinate James Meredith. Written in response to that killing Welty, speaking in the voice of a certain kind of Southern man she was well acquainted with, gave others the vision they had already imagined. Playing to the crowd, preaching to the choir, whatever you want to call it, it was sadly as truly told as it was stereotypical.
No Place For You, My Love owns the book. A story about a man who, having just met a woman at a restaurant, takes this woman, this married woman, on a trip down the highway as far as you can go. Beyond New Orleans they go, until they reach the veritable end of the road and the beginning of the Gulf of Mexico. On the way we meet some of the characters who live in this zone between civilization and the ocean.
The Bride of Innisfallen works as an example of how much you can advance a story through dialogue. A group of people gather on a train in England heading north to Ireland. We learn much about them in the process
Going to Naples is my favorite story in the collection. In this story a group of people, unrelated having just met, are on a journey across the Atlantic back to their homes on the Italian peninsula. Some are older immigrants returning to die, some are just visiting the home of their birth, while others are just plYing tourist. A young girl is accompanied by her Mother and we watch her shipboard romance develop. A great illustration of the immigrant experience, showing that the great assimilation that we are told that the European immigrants always practiced was perhaps not so compete.
And, in what might have been her most controversial story, Where is the Voice Coming From, we view an unnamed man as he sets out to, and succeeds in, his plan to assassinate James Meredith. Written in response to that killing Welty, speaking in the voice of a certain kind of Southern man she was well acquainted with, gave others the vision they had already imagined. Playing to the crowd, preaching to the choir, whatever you want to call it, it was sadly as truly told as it was stereotypical.
Read
November 23, 2023Eudora Welty was around 30 when the first of her writing was first published. And in those early stories and novels, you can see the develop of the voice and mind at work. She’s never naive, and in fact is especially sharp, especially in stories like “The Wide Net” and “A Petrified Man” both of which show both a wisdom and irony about relationships. In this collection, she’s clearly older. She’s expanded beyond her Mississippi roots in trying to capture other places in the world and characters from other parts of this character.
The title story doesn’t read like a Welty story at all. The Innisfallen is a cross-Atlantic ship taking a young bride to Ireland to be married. And the story shows the kind of sadness and intrigue her position inspires in the crew and fellow passengers. In the opening story, we see a young married couple from the North coming to New Orleans on their honeymoon and be completely out of their element in the Southern (and quite queer) city. In another story, we meet the white head of a plantation during the Civil War humorously refuse to surrender her home to be burned by Sherman’s troops.
And there are others. What strikes me most is that a lot of Southern literature characterizes the South and elicits a kind of curiosity in its non-Southern readers. And these stories refuse to participate in the kinds of gawking this sometimes creates. The South is often the target of the entire ire of the country (and it’s not undeserved obviously) but most Southerners recognize similar warts in other parts of the country. I liked this more than The Wide Net, but less than A Curtain of Green.
The title story doesn’t read like a Welty story at all. The Innisfallen is a cross-Atlantic ship taking a young bride to Ireland to be married. And the story shows the kind of sadness and intrigue her position inspires in the crew and fellow passengers. In the opening story, we see a young married couple from the North coming to New Orleans on their honeymoon and be completely out of their element in the Southern (and quite queer) city. In another story, we meet the white head of a plantation during the Civil War humorously refuse to surrender her home to be burned by Sherman’s troops.
And there are others. What strikes me most is that a lot of Southern literature characterizes the South and elicits a kind of curiosity in its non-Southern readers. And these stories refuse to participate in the kinds of gawking this sometimes creates. The South is often the target of the entire ire of the country (and it’s not undeserved obviously) but most Southerners recognize similar warts in other parts of the country. I liked this more than The Wide Net, but less than A Curtain of Green.
Want to read
August 5, 2012Welty, Eudora
The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty
In compilation only.
1) No Place for You, My Love
2) The Burning
3) The Bride of the Innisfallen
4) Ladies in Spring
5) Circe
6) Kin
7) Going to Naples
The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty
In compilation only.
1) No Place for You, My Love
2) The Burning
3) The Bride of the Innisfallen
4) Ladies in Spring
5) Circe
6) Kin
7) Going to Naples
July 1, 2024
I read the first story in this collection before putting it aside. It's rare that I don't finish a book, but I struggled to get through this. I'm reserving the right to come back to it at a later date.
November 23, 2009
Quite liked it at start and for most of the stories. Didn't really get into the last story-long one- "Going to Naples."
March 1, 2014
this collection is my favorite!!!!! Loved The Burning--wow!
March 10, 2020
Good collection of short stories.
No Place for You, My Love ★★★★
The Burning ★★★
The Bride of Innisfallen ★★★
Ladies in Spring ★★★
Circe ★★★
Kin ★★★
Going to Naples ★★★
No Place for You, My Love ★★★★
The Burning ★★★
The Bride of Innisfallen ★★★
Ladies in Spring ★★★
Circe ★★★
Kin ★★★
Going to Naples ★★★
January 24, 2017
Stories of ordinary people on trains, on ships, in little towns . . .
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews