Eudora Welty

Eudora Welty

Eudora Welty was born on April 12, 1909 in Jackson, Mississippi. Her mother name is Chestina Andrew Welty from West Virginia and her father is Chris Welty so called “Yankee Father”. She was the only child in the family. Though-out her life she did not get married, based on the New York Times she stated “never came up”. During her education career she attended the Mississippi state college for women before graduating from the University of Wisconsin in 1929. She also studied advertising at Columbia University of Business. The year she graduated was around the Great Depression. She seems to be interested in art and photography at her younger year. She did not fine a job during that time so she returns to Jackson in 1931. On the same year when Welty return home her father died, it was a terrible loss both for her and her family. In Jackson she work part-time job as a Journalist, copy writer and as a photographer for Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Work Progress Administration from 1933 to 1936. Later she’s interested in writing fiction stories. One of her first collection of stories was The Curtain of Green (1941), but her first story was Death of a Traveling Salesman (1936). All of her stories are pure fiction and nothing else. With all of her works she received some major literary awards such as “Critical Acclaim”, “William Dean Howells Medal of the Academy of Arts and Letters”, and “Pulitzer Prize”. Sadly her times end at age 92, she was suffering from pneumonia. She born and died in Jackson 1909-2001.

Eudora lived though the Great Depression, World War One, World War Two, Cold War, and The civil Right movement. During on of these even might have affect her writing. For an example without the Great Depression kicks in Eudora might not have became a fiction story writer. Based on the time she wrote The Petrified Man she put in the style of the southerner talks and their custom during the 1900’s.

One of Eudora’s short stories, The Petrified Man talk about a small town in the south around