Eudora Welty Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas

Publication Order of Collections

Publication Order of's Chapbooks

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of A Harvest/Hbj Book Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Eudora Welty
Eudora Welty was born April 13, 1909 in Jackson, Mississippi, the daughter of Mary Chestina and Christian Webb Welty. She grew up with Walter Andrews and Edward Jefferson, her younger brothers. Her mom was a schoolteacher. Her family were members of the Methodist church.

Eudora quickly developed a love of reading that was reinforced by her mom, that believed any room in their house, at any time of the day, was there to read in, or to be read to. Her dad, who worked as an insurance executive, was intrigued by machines and gadgets and inspired in Eudora a love of mechanical things. She would later use technology for symbolism in her stories and would become an avid photographer like her dad.

She attended Central High School in Jackson. Close to the time she graduated high school, she moved with her family to this house built for them at 1119 Pinehurst Street, which would remain her permanent address until she died. Their Tudor Revival style home was designed by Wyatt C. Hedrick.

Eudora studied at the Mississippi State College for Women from 1925 to 1927, before transferring to the University of Wisconsin in order to complete her studies in English literature. At her dad’s suggestion, she studied advertising at Columbia University. Since she graduated during the depths of the Great Depression, she struggled to find any work in New York.

Her dad died of leukemia shortly after Eudora came back to Jackson in 1931. She got a job at a local radio station and wrote as a correspondent about Jackson society for The Commercial Appeal, the Memphis newspaper.

In 1933, she began working for the Works Progress Administration. As a publicity agent, she conducted interviews, collected stories, and took photographs of daily life in Mississippi. She gained a much wider view of Southern life and the human relationships which she drew on for her short stories. During this time, she also held meetings in her home with friends and fellow writers, a group that she called the Night-Blooming Cereus Club. She left her job three years later and become a full time writer.

She published “The Death of a Traveling Salesman” in 1936 in Manuscript, a literary magazine, and was quickly publishing stories in numerous other notable publications like The New Yorker and The Sewanee Review.

Eudora strengthened her place as an influential Southern author when she published “A Curtain of Green”, her first story collection. Her newfound success won her a seat on the staff of The New York Times Book Review, and a Guggenheim Fellowship which enabled her to travel to Germany, Ireland, France, and England. While she was abroad, she spent some time as a resident lecturer at the universities of Cambridge and Oxford, becoming the first woman to get permitted into the hall of Peterhouse College. She returned back home to Jackson to care for her brothers and elderly mom in 1960.

Place is of vital importance to Welty’s writing. She believed place is what makes fiction seem real, since with place comes feelings, customs, and associations. Place answers questions like who is here, who’s coming, and what happened.

She was also noted for using mythology to connect her specific locations and characters to universal themes and truths. Phoenix, the old black woman from “A Worn Path”, has much in common with the mythical bird. Phoenixes are described as gold and red and are known for their dignity and endurance. She is described as wearing a red handkerchief with undertones of gold and is noble and enduring in her hard quest to retrieve the medicine to save her grandson.

She won three O. Henry Awards for “The Demonstrators”, “The Wide Net”, and “Livvie is Back”. She also won the William Dean Howells medal for fiction, “The Ponder Heart”, a Presidential Medal of Freedom, and a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for “The Optimist’s Daughter”. The first paperback edition of “The Collected Works of Eudora Welty” won a National Book Award. Eudora also won a PEN/Malamud Award and a Rea Award for the short story. She was the first living author to have her works published in the prestigious Library of America series.

“The Robber Bridegroom” is the first stand alone novel and was released in 1942. In the midst of the Mississippi woods, Rosamund Musgrove (young and pretty) lives with her dad, Clement, and Salome, her jealous and chilly stepmom. There, she’s loved by her dad yet treated poorly by his wife, never able to please however little she does complain.

One day, she gets instructed to clean the house from top to bottom, to polish the dishes, to wash the floor, and to shine the candlesticks until the glitter and gleam in the darkness. That evening, all worn out and disheveled, she meets Jamie Lockhart (a dashing bandit) for the first time, and from then on, her fate’s sealed.

In this colorful and extraordinary fairy tale story of the South, Eudora clearly displays her admiration of the old tradition and combines it with her curious and perceptive sense of the place and the people that she loves.

“The Ponder Heart” is the third stand alone novel and was released in 1954. Edna Earle’s Uncle Daniel Ponder is quite the character in the town of Clay, Mississippi: he dresses fit to kill in a snow white suit, he carries a Stetson, and is just as good as gold, everybody will admit that. However the trouble with Uncle Ponder is that he is as rich as Croesus and is a great deal too generous. He gave Edna Earle a hotel, and he once even tried to give away his own lot in a cemetery.

However after his first marriage to Miss “Teacake” Magee did not pan out, he needed somebody else to give things to. So he married Bonnie Dee Peacock (age seventeen) from a poor backwoods family that could cut hair and looked like a good gust of wind might just carry her off. She was carried off, however not by the wind, and the result, which is related in Edna’s rattling tongue, is a masterpiece of comic absurdity.