More Conversations with Eudora Welty
304 pages, 6 x 9
Paperback
Release Date:01 May 1996
ISBN:9780878058655
CA$37.95 add to cart button Back Order
Ships in 4-6 weeks.
GO TO CART

More Conversations with Eudora Welty

University Press of Mississippi

This book of conversations with one of America’s most revered writers extends the firsthand account of Eudora Welty’s life and work from the early 1980s to the present and supplements Conversations with Eudora Welty, which novelist Anne Tyler said brought her “pure pleasure.”

These interviews include many that refer to Welty’s memoir, One Writer’s Beginnings, and greatly amplify the picture of her personal life that emerged from the earlier collection of interviews. She reminisces here about her parents, her childhood and schooldays in Jackson, Mississippi, and her sojourns in New York City. She speaks of gardening, travel, friends, and writers—both of contemporaries she had known as friends or associates and those she has never met, except through their books. One whose presence and influence she never fails to mention in conversations about admired predecessors is Anton Chekov. Others whose names recur frequently in these interviews are her friends Katherine Anne Porter and Elizabeth Bowen.

Here too Welty answers questions about her photographic work and about the photographic images she recorded in the 1930s. With her interviewers, she also assesses changes she has witnessed during her lifetime—changes in the southern landscape, southern society, southern writing. She talks about her own experiences with aging, the inevitable loss of friends, and the waning of physical vitality. She replies to queries about specific characters and settings in her work—questions about origins, sources, and real-life counterparts. She reveals some of her compositional designs in the writing of Losing Battles and The Optimist’s Daughter and discusses the significance of the Delta region as the setting for The Golden Apples. Her lifetime interest in local details—names, customs, and tales, such as those that show up in Mississippi country newspapers and farm journals—has long been evident in her stories, and her she recalls them with evident pleasure.

Peggy Whitman Prenshaw is a former editor of the Southern Quarterly (1974-1991), Millsaps College humanities scholar-in-residence, and Fred C. Frey Professor Emerita, Louisiana State University. She is also series editor of the Literary Conversations Series, published by University Press of Mississippi.

Find what you’re looking for...

Graphic with text reads: Winter Sale. In December, take 20% off all books on our website using code BRRR24 at checkout.

Stay Informed

Receive the latest UBC Press news, including events, catalogues, and announcements.


Read past newsletters

Free shipping on online orders over $40

Publishers Represented
UBC Press is the Canadian agent for several international publishers. Visit our Publishers Represented page to learn more.