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Her stories and photographs amazed and surprised those who knew them, but the creative work alone was not all that her friends and admirers loved: the modesty, wit, generosity, and friendship she unfailingly displayed is also is a common theme in the obituary tributes and remembrances written in honor of Eudora Welty in July of 2001. The death of a master writer may always inspire reflection, praise, and even re-evaluation of a career, but the one hundred plus articles and essays memorializing Welty as often contain anecdotes of personal experience with her-a dinner conversation, a walk through the mall, a drive from a train station, a chance meeting in the grocery or on a cruise ship, a visit in her home or in that of some charmed hostess or host. Many of the obituaries cover common ground, outlining the basic facts of her life, listing her works, summarizing her career and citing the many awards she received. The authors are mostly journalists or professional book page editors, but professors and poets, photographers and producers, fiction writers of two or three generations and politicians are heard from in quoted interviews. In the Winter 2002 issue of the Eudora Welty Newsletter, I include summaries of seventy-four cited pieces, short quotes, and information about those who were interviewed or quoted in the obituary. The entries are arranged chronologically by publication date. Aaron, Chloe. "Eudora Welty's Deal." The New York Times 30 July 2001: A16. Ajzenstadt, Michael. "News of the Muse." The Jerusalem Post 25 July 2001: 9. Anders, Smiley. "Eudora Welty." The Advocate [Baton Rouge, L.A.] 25 July 2001: B1. Angell, Roger. "Postscript Eudora Welty." The New Yorker 6 August 2001: 30. Balkan, Evan
L. "Inspiration a Legacy of Eudora Welty." The Baltimore
Sun 26 July Barnes, Bart.
"Writer Eudora Welty Dies: Voice of American South: Stories Barron, Dixie
Leigh. "Double Loss Enough to Send Person into a Funk." The
Memphis Battersby, Eileen. "Speaking From the Heart." The Irish Times 31 July 2001: 10. Bawden, Jim.
"TV Version of Eudora Welty Novel Lifts Gloom." Toronto Star
Binding,
Paul. "Books: How a Writer Should Be." Independent on Sunday
Bogan, Kate.
"Southern Graces: Eudora Welty, 1909-2001." Times Literary
Branson,
Reed. "Friends, Fans Bid Farewell to Welty." The Memphis
Commercial Broeckman,
Frances. "Looking Back to Cherokee Roses and Eudora." Mississippi
Burch, Peggy.
"She Saw Glory in Subtlest Nuance: Miss Welty Put Us Ever So Gently
Campos, Paul.
"Saying Thanks While It Matters." The Rocky Mountain News
[Denver] Childress,
Mark. "Recalling Miss Welty." Times Literary Supplement
3 August Connelly,
Sherryl. " Welty: Local Color, National Treasure." New York
Daily News Craven, Peter. "Short Story Loses a Master." The Australian 1 August 2001: 39. Culbert,
David. "Remembering Eudora Welty." Times Literary Supplement
Douglas,
Ellen. "Welty Stories Were about Connections." The Clarion-Ledger
Druckenmiller,
John, and Betty Parham. "Living Online." The Atlanta Journal
and Ealy, Charles.
"'Southern Writer Eudora Welty Dies at Age 92." The Dallas
Morning Edgerton,
Clyde. "In Memoriam 2001: Eudora Welty." Entertainment Weekly
January 4, 2002: 36. Elliott,
Jack Jr. "Pulitzer-Winning Author Eudora Welty Dies at 92."
New York -----. "Acclaimed
Author Eudora Welty Dies: Pulitzer Prize-Winner Spun -----. "Pulitzer-Prize
Winner Welty Dies: Her Touching Tales Brought Her -----. "Noted
Southern Writer Eudora Welty, at 92 Concentrated on Depicting -----. "Welty
Was Acclaimed for Depiction of South." Milwaukee Journal -----. "Writer
of Mississippi Tales, Eudora Welty, Dies at 92: The Pulitzer -----. "Storyteller,
Civil Rights Killer Died in 2001." The Memphis Eyman, Scott.
"Author's Compassion Shaped Her Characters." The Palm Beach
Post Feeley, Kathleen. "Remembering Eudora Welty." America 15 October 2001: 13. Ford, Richard. "Eulogy." Time 6 August 2001: 19. Gardner,
Marilyn. "Public Lives, Private Roles." The Christian Science
Monitor Gettleman,
Jeffrey. "Eudora Welty, Voice of Southern Simplicity, Dies: Her Stories
of Glendenning,
Karin. "Remembering Eudora Welty." Chattanooga Times/Chattanooga
Gussow, Dave.
"Cyberia." St. Petersburg Times [St. Petersburg, FL] 9 September
2001: Harty, Kristin.
"Welty's Prose Takes Pivotal Place in American Letters: Author to
Heitman,
Danny. "Remembering Eudora Welty." The Advocate [Baton Rouge,
L.A.] -----. "Eudora
Welty's Friendship Book." The Advocate [Baton Rouge, L.A.] -----. "More
Thoughts About Friendship." The Advocate [Baton Rouge, L.A.] Herring,
Lori. "'One Writer's Beginnings'
:Welty's Legacy a Childlike
Wonder Hodgman,
George. "Southern Comfort." Entertainment Weekly 607 (August
3, 2001): 19. Hyland, Mary
Pat. "Eudora Welty: Web Sites Highlight Life of Acclaimed Writer."
The "Indelible
Images: Eudora Welty, who died July 23, captured the South in pictures
as well as words." Smithsonian 32.7 (2001): 38-40. Johnson,
Rheta Grimsley. "Stereotypes Obscure Mississippi's Riches."
The Atlanta Jones, Malcolm.
"Southern Lady, World-Class Storyteller: Eudora Welty, April 13,
Kahn, Joseph.
"A Pause to Remember Those Who Departed." The Boston Globe Keith, Don
Lee. "A Vase of Zinnias for Miss Welty." The Times-Picayune
28 July Kipen, David.
"Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author Eudora Welty." The San Francisco
Koeppel,
Fredric. "Welty, Mississippi's Gentle Ambassador to World, Dies at
92." Krebs, Albin.
"Eudora Welty, A Lyrical Master of the Short Story Is Dead at 92."
-----. "Eudora
Welty: Shorty Story Writer Noted for Small-Town Southern Lee, Hermione.
"On Eudora Welty (1909-2001)." The New York Review of Books
Leith, Sam. "Flyleaf." The Daily Telegraph [London] 4 August 2001: 4. Lucas, Sherry.
"Author Will Always Be 'One of Us'." The Clarion-Ledger 26 July
Lifson, Amy.
"Remembering Eudora Welty." Humanities: The Magazine of the
National Lilly, J.R. "Eudora Welty." Times Literary Supplement 7 September 2001: 17. Lindon, Mathieu.
"Eudora Welty, Grande Ecrivaine du Sud." Liberation 25 July
2001: Marrs, Suzanne.
"Eudora Welty (1909-2001)." PlanetWeekly [Jackson, Mississippi]
Maxwell,
Bill. "Writer Personified the Best of the South." St. Petersburg
Times McCarty,
Mary. "Two Were Towers of Strength." Dayton Daily News 25 July
2001: McHaney,
Pearl A. "Eudora Welty, 1909-2001." South Atlantic Review 66.4
(2001): 134-136. Mehegan,
David. "Eudora Welty, A Voice of the South Dies." The Boston
Globe Merriman,
Ann Lloyd. "Between the Bookends." The Richmond Times-Dispatch."
Messud, Claire. "Eudora Welty: A Quietly Magnificent American Novelist, She Captured the Nuances of Small-Town Mississippi Life." The Guardian [London] 25 July 2001: 20. -----. "Eudora Welty." Manchester Guardian Weekly 8 August 2001: 21. Minzesheimer,
Bob. "Eudora Welty's Lyrical Prose Filled up Her 'Daring Life'."
Mitchell,
Jerry. "Brisk Sales Add to Welty Tribute: Awareness of Treasured
Nolan, Tom. "Driving with Miss Welty." Oxford American 41 (Fall 2001): 126-127. "Obituaries:
Welty, Eudora." Current Biography November 2001: 92-93. Patchett,
Ann. "The Lives They Lived: Eudora Welty, B. 1909 Dale Earnhardt,
B. Patterson,
James. "Missing Miss Welty." PlanetWeekly [Jackson, Mississippi]
Patterson,
Troy, and Karyn Valby. "Southern Comfort: Eudora Welty Spun Her Magical
Pettus, Gary.
"'Grand Lady' Admired for Pure Voice." The Clarion-Ledger 24
July Pleasants,
A.K. "Trust and Intimacy: Eudora Welty, Who Died July 23, Captured
the Pope, John.
"South Was Welty's Passion: 92-year-old Writer Dies in Mississippi."
The Poretto,
John. "Funeral Held for Pulitzer Prize-Winning Writer Welty."
Chattanooga -----. "Admirers
Bid Farewell to Eudora Welty." The Advocate [Baton Rouge, L.A.] -----. "Welty
Works Donated to Mississippi Museum of Art." The Memphis Commercial
Price, Reynolds.
"A High Old Time (Remembering Eudora Welty)." Aperture 166 (Spring
2002): 22-31. "Pulitzer
Prize-winning author Eudora Welty lived as she wrote--with southern style
and grace." People Weekly August 06, 2001: 85-86. Reynolds,
Susan Salter. "An Appreciation: A Dreamer and Observer Who Saw the
Truth Salmon, Alice
Wooledge. "Appreciation: Eudora Welty." The Guardian [London]
Sandstrom,
Karen. "Eudora Welty: The Artist as Reporter." The Plain Dealer
29 July Savigneau,
Josyane. "Eudora Welty: L'ultime Survivante de la Generation des
Scheuerman,
Rick. "Roll Out The Barrell
." St Petersburg Times [South
Pinellas FL] Schiff, Nancy R. "Eudora Welty." The Independent [London] 25 July 2001: 6. Schroeder,
Heather Lee. "An Open Letter to Eudora Welty." The Capital Times
Sharp, Iain.
"Features Her Daring Life Started Within." Sunday Star Times
[Auckland, Simpson,
Lewis P. "Some Notes on the Remembering of Remembering: Eudora Welty
(1909-2001)." The Southern Review 37.4 (Autumn 2001): 831-836. "Southern
Lady, World-class Storyteller: Eudora Welty, April 13, 1909 - July 23,
2001." Newsweek August 6, 2001: 60. Straziuso,
Jason. "Author Gave Voice to the South." The San Diego Union-Tribune
29 -----. "Literary
Fans Hope New Welty Works Exist." The Memphis Commercial Appeal -----. "Welty
Estate Names Ford Executor: Jackson Natives Were Friends." The Stellman,
Ben. "Miss Welty Leaves Literary Legacy to Readers." Sunday
Star-News Taylor, Beth.
"Stories Spin Comedy, Wisdom into Moving Web of Life." The Thomas, Bill.
"A Treasured Bouquet of Memories." The Memphis Commercial Appeal
Tillotson,
Kristin. "Eudora Welty: World Will Long Remember Writer Who Tolson, Jay. "Optimism's Daughter." U.S. News & World Report 6 August 2001: 41. Updike, John,
Elizabeth Spencer, Fred Chappell, X.J. Kennedy, Suzanne Marrs, Maude Walker, Kevin. "Jacksons to Unite. Hurray." The Tampa Tribune 30 July 2001: 1. Warmbold,
Carolyn Nizzi. "First Lady of Southern Literature: Eudora Welty 1909- Watkins,
Billy. "Author Gone, but Words Live On: Eudora Welty Remembered."
Weaver, Teresa
K. "A Southern Genius and 'National Treasure'." The Atlanta
-----. "Welty Resting in 'Better bed'." The Atlanta Constitution 27 July 2001: E1. -----. "Bidding
Eudora Welty Farewell." The Atlanta Constitution 27 July Weeks, Linton.
"Eudora Welty, Grand Lady of American Literature: A Southern -----. "Eudora Welty Wrote Stories of the South." Toronto Star 25 July 2001: F3. -----. "Welty's
Influence Was Quiet, Powerful." Capital Times [Madison, WI] -----. "Oh,
The Stories She Could Tell: Welty's Sophisticated Simplicity." The
Record -----. "A
Genteel Giant Who Shied Away from Nothing." Newsday [New York, NY]
-----. "Welty
Wrote With Humor and an Unflinching Eye." The Times Union Wilemon,
Tom. "State Planning Museum for Author Eudora Welty Home in Jackson,
Yardley,
Jonathan. "Eudora Welty, Choosing Pen Over Pulpit." The Washington
-----. "Drawing
a Line Between Novelist and Crusader." The Record Zane, Peder.
"Welty's Passing: A Death in the Family." The News and Observer
"Author
Eudora Welty Dies at 92." The Charleston Gazette [West Virginia]
24 July "Author Eudora Welty Dies at 92." Financial Times [London] 24 July 2001: 1. "Briefly." The Hamilton Spectator 13 August 2001: C12. "Callaway
High Grad Fortner Wins Welty Writing Award." The Clarion-Ledger "Changes." The Toronto Sun 29 July 2001: 27. "Corrections." The New York Times 25 July 2001: A2. "Crowds
File Past Welty Casket in Museum." The Memphis Commercial Appeal
26 July "Deaths Elsewhere." The Houston Chronicle 24 July 2001: A15. "Discovering
New Welty Works Tantalizes Some." The Chattanooga "A Distinct
Voice of 20th Century Dies with Welty." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 29
July "Eudora Welty." Liberation 24 July 2001: 27. "Eudora Welty." The Clarion Ledger 25 July 2001: Deaths. "Eudora Welty." The Commercial Appeal 25 July 2001: A6. "Eudora Welty." The Scotsman 25 July 2001: 14. "Eudora Welty." The Times [London] 25 July 2001: 14. "Eudora
Welty 1909-2001: 'She Was Absolutely Lovely'." The Oxford Eagle 26
July "Eudora Welty." The Charleston Gazette [West Virginia] 27 July 2001: A4. "Eudora Welty." The Times [London] 28 July 2001. "Eudora Welty." Sunday Star-News [Wilmington, NC] 29 July 2001: E6. "Eudora Welty." The Washington Post 29 July 2001: C5. "Eudora Welty." Variety 30 July 2001: 39. "Eudora Welty." The Manchester Guardian Weekly 8 August 2001: 21. "Eudora Welty." The Economist (US) 11 August 2001: Obituaries. "Eudora
Welty: 13 April 1909-23 July 2001." Georgia Review 55 (2): Summer
2001: "Eudora
Welty, 92, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Novelist." Newsday [New York, NY]
"Eudora
Welty Dead at 92 Mississippi Writer Made the South Come Alive." Charleston
"Eudora Welty Dies." The Seattle Times 24 July 2001: A1. "Eudora Welty Dies at 92." Financial Times [London] 24 July 2001: 1. "Eudora
Welty Dies at 92 in Mississippi." The Advocate [Baton Rouge, L.A.]
24 July "Eudora Welty's Daringly Sheltered Life." The New York Times 25 July 2001: A16. "Eudora Welty's Deal." The New York Times 30 July 2001: A16. "Eudora Welty's Sense of Place." The Tampa Tribune 25 July 2001: 14. "Facts about Eudora Welty." The Dallas Morning News 23 July 2001: K4975. "Fixstern
im Kosmos der Suedstaaten; Zum Tod der Schriftstellerin Eudora Welty "Fond Farewells." The Times-Picayune 30 December 2001: 5. "For the Record: Correction." The Boston Globe 25 July 2001: A2. "Gentle
Craftsman of Southern Lives." The Advocate [Baton Rouge, L.A.] 25
July 2001: "Gestorben Eudora Welty." Der Spiegel 30 July 2001: 174. "Grand Lady of American Literature." Business Times Singapore 25 July 2001. "Grant
to Preserve Welty Home Sought." The Memphis Commercial Appeal "Her
Life and Accomplishments at a Glance: Eudora Welty 1909-2001." The
Atlanta "Historians
Hope to Make Welty's Home a Museum." The Desert News [Salt Lake City,
"Historians
Seek Grant to Preserve Writer's Home." Charleston Daily Mail 23 October
"Homefolks,
Authors Honor Eudora Welty." The Atlanta Journal and Constitution
26 "Hundreds
Pay Respect to Author Eudora Welty." The Times Union [Albany, NY]
26 "If
You've Never Read Welty, Try a Sample of Her Writing." The Clarion-Ledger
"In Brief." St. Petersburg Times [South Pinellas, FL] 26 July 2001: A10. "A Life Lived from Within." Austin American Statesman 26 July 2001: A16. "Listening to Eudora Welty." The Washington Post 29 July 2001: B6. "Lives Lived: Literature." The Ottawa Citizen 30 December 2001:C4. "Mississippi: Author's Home to Be Museum." The New York Times 23 October 2001: A18 "Mississippi
Author Eudora Welty, 92, Dies." Chattanooga Times/Chattanooga Free
"Milestones." Time 6 August 2001: 19. "Milestones." Time International 6 August 2001: 14. "Nation in Brief." St. PetersburgTimes [South Pinellas, FL] 27 July 2001: A11. "Netwatcher." The Atlanta Journal and Constitution 29 July 2001: Q2. "Newsmakers." The Houston Chronicle 13 August 2001: A2. "Obituaries." Variety 30 July 2001: 39. "Obituary
of Eudora Welty Author Whose Tales of Life in Mississippi Won the Pulitzer
"Painted Life With Words." Herald Sun 27 July 2001: 102. "Passages." The Seattle Times 29 July 2001: A19. "Passages." Maclean's 6 August 2001: 13. "Passings." The Record [Kitchener-Waterloo] 25 July 2001: A7. "People, Etc." The Memphis Commercial Appeal 13 August 2001: A8. "The Place of Place." The Wilson Quarterly 22 September 2001: 12. "Prize-Winning
Author Eudora Welty Dies at Age 92." Montreal Gazette 24 July 2001:
"Pulitzer
Prize Winner Welty Dies." The Columbian [Vancouver, WA] 24 July 2001:
"Pulitzer
Prize-Winning Chronicler of the U.S. South." The Irish Times 28 July
2001: "Pulitzer Prize Winner Credits Welty." The Clarion-Ledger 13 August 2001: B1. "Pulitzer-Winning Writer Eudora Welty Dies at 92." The Toronto Sun 24 July 2001: 39. "Quotes of Note." The Boston Globe 28 July 2001: A15. "'A
Sheltered Life Can Be A Daring Life'; Welty's Empathy Was Also Her Passion."
"Short Takes." The Plain Dealer 28 September 2001: E5. "Speed Reads." The Atlanta Journal and Constitution 31 July 2001: C1. "Speed Reads." The Atlanta Journal and Constitution 6 August 2001: B1. "Storied
Life: Mississippi Author Eudora Welty Leaves a Legacy of Award-Winning
"Top Stories." The Atlanta Journal and Constitution 29 July 2001: B8. "Trio
of Great Ladies Will Be Sorely Missed." News and Record [Greensboro,
NC] "Two Notable Women." Los Angeles Times 27 July 2001: 14. "Universal Embrace of a 'Regionalist'." Los Angeles Times 27 July 2001: Metro14. "Unpublished Work in Welty's Attic?" The Seattle Times 31 July 2001: A5. "A Voice
of the South Silenced: Author Eudora Welty Dies at 92." The Houston
"Welty
Executor Says She Was His Role Model." The Advocate [Baton Rouge,
L.A.]: "Welty Farewell Draws 700 Fans, Friends." Los Angeles Times 26 July 2001: 11. "Welty
Had Deep Insight Into Humanity." News & Record [Greensboro, NC]
25 July "Welty
May Have Had Fiction in Works." Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 31 July
2001: "Welty's
Casket at old Capitol Museum Today." The Memphis Commercial Appeal
"Welty's
Worlds: A Southern Writer Portrayed People, Not Politics." Pittsburgh
Post- "Works of Eudora Welty." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 24 July 2001: A11. "Writer
Ford Says Welty Was His Role Model." The Times Union [Albany, NY]
"Writer
Found Universe at Home." The Australian 7 August 2001: 16. Through this web site, the Eudora Welty Newsletter receives two or three inquiries a week, mostly from students and book clubs, for information about Welty's books, her life, and the scholarship and criticism useful to those who would study or write about her. The following additions to the web site are a first effort to provide such information in a general form available to all. Suggestions are welcome, and requests for information will still receive the attention they deserve. Please also visit our FAQ page for more information.
Eudora Welty was born in Jackson, Mississippi, on April 13, 1909, and attended the public schools there. She published several pieces in magazines for children before she reached her teens. From 1925-1927, she attended Mississippi State College for Women (MSCW, or the "W" as it was called) in Columbus, but transferred for her final two years of college to the University of Wisconsin in Madison. She spent an academic year in New York City, studying at the Columbia University School of Business but attending lectures, plays, concerts, and art exhibitions as well. The untimely death of her father in 1931 prompted her return to Jackson, where she worked for the local radio station and wrote Jackson and Delta society news for the Memphis, Tennessee, Commercial Appeal, a major newspaper for northwest Mississippi. In 1935 and 1936, she worked for Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal program the Works Progress Administration (WPA), serving as a "junior publicity agent" and traveling to many parts of Mississippi to promote road building, new airstrips, canning factories, and other efforts to bring economic progress to poor and remote rural areas of the state. In 1936 she published her first important short story, and from that time onward her writing career expanded and found considerable success, as the list of book publications below indicates. All of Welty's writing is the product of a determined shaping imagination and a deep love and understanding for the power of carefully chosen language to evoke charactersin dramatic motion. Her stories are very much created by her own art out of materials she found and was touched by, material assembled by the artist's eye. EUDORA
WELTY: 1941
A Curtain of Green (short stories). Garden
City, N.Y.: Doubleday Doran. 1991
Norton Book of Friendship, ed. Ronald A. Sharp and Eudora
Welty. Norton. As this selective list shows, Welty continued to write for publication into her mid-seventies, and for a decade afterward she cooperated with several ventures to bring uncollected work to press. A serious student of Welty's fiction would do well to read all the essays and interviews and to examine the photographs carefully. Welty's full list of publications, which includes appearances in magazines and newspapers as well as in the books of others, limited editions of stories and essays, and a great many translations, can be found in Noel Polk's indispensable bibliography of her writing (Welty: A Bibliography of Her Work. Jackson: UniversityPress of Mississippi, 1994.) This book is still available from the press. The Welty Collection, ed. Suzanne Marrs (Jackson: U Press of Mississippi) is a thorough guide to the great trove of Welty's papers and photographs at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History in Jackson. BIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM Welty's One Writer's Beginnings is a remarkably useful account of her origins and development as a writer, and her essays on her own reading or on the art of writing, collected in some of the volumes listed above, are excellent testaments to her sources, her Masters, and her practice and standards as a writer. More biographical detail about her can be found in Ruth Vande Kieft's Eudora Welty, rev. edition (Twayne, 1987), Albert Devlin's Eudora Welty's Chronicle: A Story of Mississippi Life (1983), and Michael Kreyling's Author and Agent: Eudora Welty and Diarmuid Russell (1991). Vande Kieft's Twayne book remains an extremely useful general introduction to the analysis of Welty's fiction, and Michael Kreyling's Eudora Welty's Achievement of Order, a more modern perspective, has been well received. Several useful collections of individual essays on Welty's writing are available: Eudora Welty: A Form of Thanks, ed. Louis Dollarhide and Ann J. Abadie (UP of Miss, 1979), Eudora Welty: Critical Essays, ed. Peggy Whitman Prenshaw (Jackson: U Press of Mississippi, 1979), and Eudora Welty: Thirteen Essays, ed. Prenshaw (U P of Miss, 1983; a selection from the previous volume, published in paperback); Welty: A Life in Literature, ed. Albert J. Devlin (Jackson: U P of Miss, 1987; a reprinting of the 1986 special number of Mississippi Quarterly); Critical Essays on Eudora Welty, ed. W. Craig Turner and Lee Emling Harding (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1989),and Eudora Welty: Eye of the Storyteller, ed. Dawn Trouard (Kent, OH; KentState UP, 1989). The Mississippi Quarterly has devoted two special issues to essays on Welty (1973, 1986, with another planned soon). Welty scholarship in this country and abroad is growing in quantity and in sophistication and is too voluminous to summarize here. Readers seeking titles of articles on specific Welty works and books on Welty's writing should consult the checklists of scholarship and criticism about Welty that have appeared in the special issues of Mississippi Quarterly (Checklists for 1936-1972 and 1973-1986, which also include reference to Welty's own published works, appear in Welty: A Life in Literature.). New checklists appear annually in the Eudora Welty Newsletter and in the Southern Bibliography published by Mississippi Quarterly. Summaries, with critical judgments, of much Welty scholarship appear in the on-going series of volumes American Literary Scholarship:An Annual (Duke University Press).
HONORS AND AWARDS A
Lifetime of Honors for Eudora Welty:
A Checklist of Awards
Addenda have been added for newly uncovered honors.] To honor someone is to hold that person in esteem, to show respect, and to mark the person with distinction. The privilege and burden of such an appropriate pause of recognition rested with Eudora Welty on May 24, 1962, when she presented William Faulkner with The Gold Medal for Fiction given by the National Institute of Arts and Letters. She said, "Mr. Faulkner, I think this medal, being pure of its kind, the real gold, would go to you of its own accord, and know its owner regardless of whether we were all here to see or not. Safe as a puppy it would climb into your pocket . . ." (Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the National Institute of Arts and Letters. Second Series. Number 13. New York: 1963: 226). Welty is fond of telling the story that the medal was indeed already in Faulkner's pocket as she spoke. She had passed it to him during dinner and presented an empty box. Before Welty received her own Gold Medal for Fiction in 1972, she had many other moments of appreciation. In looking at the following checklist of Eudora Welty's lifetime awards, one can see that over many years, Welty has been honored by national governments, colleges and universities, magazines, local institutions. It is obvious that her appeal is universal as her admirers have no limiting common denominator except a love of her work. This list includes local, regional, national, and international honors for individual stories and novels as well as for lifetime achievement. The list is culled from Noel Polk's Eudora Welty: A Bibliography of Her Work (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1994), where the day and month are often given, and from past Eudora Welty Newsletters, where fuller reports of awards, including descriptions and names of other recipients, may be found. Please notify the Eudora Welty Newsletter of any corrections or additional awards that merit inclusion for a future update. EUDORA WELTY: AWARDS AND HONORS 1920
Silver Badge, St. Nicholas Magazine, for a drawing "A Heading for
August."
1980
Medal of Freedom given by Jimmy Carter. |
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