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Rare Eudora Welty / One Writer's Beginnings 1st Edition 1984 - Harvard University Press [Hardcover] Eudora Welty
This rare and vintage book is a perfect addition to any bibliophile's collection
233 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1983
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About the author
Eudora Welty
221 books1,005 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.
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March 5, 2017
Rating: 4.5* of five
The Publisher Says: Eudora Welty was born in 1909 in Jackson, Mississippi. In a "continuous thread of revelation" she sketches her autobiography and tells us how her family and her surroundings contributed to the shaping not only of her personality but of her writing. Homely and commonplace sights, sounds, and objects resonate with the emotions of recollection: the striking clocks, the Victrola, her orphaned father's coverless little book saved since boyhood, the tall mountains of the West Virginia back country that become a metaphor for her mother's sturdy independence, Eudora's earliest box camera that suspended a moment forever and taught her that every feeling awaits a gesture. She has recreated this vanished world with the same subtlety and insight that mark her fiction.
Even if Eudora Welty were not a major writer, her description of growing up in the South--of the interplay between black and white, between town and countryside, between dedicated schoolteachers and the public they taught--would he notable. That she is a splendid writer of fiction gives her own experience a family likeness to others in the generation of young Southerners that produced a literary renaissance. Until publication of this book, she had discouraged biographical investigations. It undoubtedly was not easy for this shy and reticent lady to undertake her own literary biography, to relive her own memories (painful as well as pleasant), to go through letters and photographs of her parents and grandparents. But we are in her debt, for the distillation of experience she offers us is a rare pleasure for her admirers, a treat to everyone who loves good writing and anyone who is interested in the seeds of creativity.
My Review: The unassuming, delight-filled, unsparingly un-self-indulgent prose of Miss Eudora's fiction is surpassed in this expansion and revision of her Massey Lecture in the History of American Civilization, delivered at Harvard in 1983. For anyone unacquainted with Miss Eudora's literary output, I recommend starting with short fiction ("The Bride of the Innisfallen" is a good starter, followed by "Why I Live at the P.O."), moving on to her chef d'ouevre, the novel The Ponder Heart; this memoir, all 104pp of it, should come after one knows whether one is able to appreciate the particularities and glories of Miss Eudora's work. While I think she would appeal to any able-minded reader, I know from experience that her beautiful sentences sound like preciosity to some readers: eg, "Over a stronghold of a face, the blue hat of the lady in the raincoat was settled on like an Indian bonnet, or, rather, like an old hat, which it was." (from "The Bride of the Innisfallen")
This, to me, is equaled in English by Nabokov's terse clarity, and by little else; but it has been cited to me several times as unendurably cutesy or simply overwritten. I so completely disagree that it's hard to credit the opinion-havers with a shred of taste; however, there are tastes, and there are tastes, so I move on from my digression.
One Writer's Beginnings is told in a narrative voice much like her fiction; it is constructed like the linear tale that a life is when it is reflected on at leisure; and there are so many things in her history, from 1909 and her birth until her last entry in the lecture, a trip by train to New York during the Great Depression as a WPA junior publicity agent, that clearly formed a consciousness of time and place and rightness of things that she uses to such telling effect in her stories. An anecdote early in the book of her parents' morning routine of whistling and humming back and forth up and down the stairs phrases from "The Merry Widow Waltz" illuminates for me the means by which this shy, never-married lady "got" the signals of relationship that are so necessary to the parties in happiness. Another moment, the discovery of two nickels preserved in a hidden box, teaches me that Miss Eudora never felt any unmixed emotion (I won't tell that story, it must be read to be understood) and that is why The Ponder Heart is such a landmark in Southern ficiton.
The death of Miss Eudora's beloved father in 1931 is simply too painful for her to go into; she elides the details and leaves us to infer her pain. It fits with her lifelong lack of interest in talking about herself, but it leaves the reader without an anchor in what had to be a turbulent passage in her life. I can't fault the lady for her reticence, but in this as in several other areas, it would have behooved Miss Eudora to have let others guide her in preparing these talks so as to answer more questions:
Well, and therein the rub: It was the last thing she ever wanted to do, answer questions, and it's also why she wrote such marvelous stories, to answer them all unasked:
Miss Eudora Welty, thank you for all of it, and a safe journey into the future for your gifts to us who follow along behind you.
The Publisher Says: Eudora Welty was born in 1909 in Jackson, Mississippi. In a "continuous thread of revelation" she sketches her autobiography and tells us how her family and her surroundings contributed to the shaping not only of her personality but of her writing. Homely and commonplace sights, sounds, and objects resonate with the emotions of recollection: the striking clocks, the Victrola, her orphaned father's coverless little book saved since boyhood, the tall mountains of the West Virginia back country that become a metaphor for her mother's sturdy independence, Eudora's earliest box camera that suspended a moment forever and taught her that every feeling awaits a gesture. She has recreated this vanished world with the same subtlety and insight that mark her fiction.
Even if Eudora Welty were not a major writer, her description of growing up in the South--of the interplay between black and white, between town and countryside, between dedicated schoolteachers and the public they taught--would he notable. That she is a splendid writer of fiction gives her own experience a family likeness to others in the generation of young Southerners that produced a literary renaissance. Until publication of this book, she had discouraged biographical investigations. It undoubtedly was not easy for this shy and reticent lady to undertake her own literary biography, to relive her own memories (painful as well as pleasant), to go through letters and photographs of her parents and grandparents. But we are in her debt, for the distillation of experience she offers us is a rare pleasure for her admirers, a treat to everyone who loves good writing and anyone who is interested in the seeds of creativity.
My Review: The unassuming, delight-filled, unsparingly un-self-indulgent prose of Miss Eudora's fiction is surpassed in this expansion and revision of her Massey Lecture in the History of American Civilization, delivered at Harvard in 1983. For anyone unacquainted with Miss Eudora's literary output, I recommend starting with short fiction ("The Bride of the Innisfallen" is a good starter, followed by "Why I Live at the P.O."), moving on to her chef d'ouevre, the novel The Ponder Heart; this memoir, all 104pp of it, should come after one knows whether one is able to appreciate the particularities and glories of Miss Eudora's work. While I think she would appeal to any able-minded reader, I know from experience that her beautiful sentences sound like preciosity to some readers: eg, "Over a stronghold of a face, the blue hat of the lady in the raincoat was settled on like an Indian bonnet, or, rather, like an old hat, which it was." (from "The Bride of the Innisfallen")
This, to me, is equaled in English by Nabokov's terse clarity, and by little else; but it has been cited to me several times as unendurably cutesy or simply overwritten. I so completely disagree that it's hard to credit the opinion-havers with a shred of taste; however, there are tastes, and there are tastes, so I move on from my digression.
One Writer's Beginnings is told in a narrative voice much like her fiction; it is constructed like the linear tale that a life is when it is reflected on at leisure; and there are so many things in her history, from 1909 and her birth until her last entry in the lecture, a trip by train to New York during the Great Depression as a WPA junior publicity agent, that clearly formed a consciousness of time and place and rightness of things that she uses to such telling effect in her stories. An anecdote early in the book of her parents' morning routine of whistling and humming back and forth up and down the stairs phrases from "The Merry Widow Waltz" illuminates for me the means by which this shy, never-married lady "got" the signals of relationship that are so necessary to the parties in happiness. Another moment, the discovery of two nickels preserved in a hidden box, teaches me that Miss Eudora never felt any unmixed emotion (I won't tell that story, it must be read to be understood) and that is why The Ponder Heart is such a landmark in Southern ficiton.
The death of Miss Eudora's beloved father in 1931 is simply too painful for her to go into; she elides the details and leaves us to infer her pain. It fits with her lifelong lack of interest in talking about herself, but it leaves the reader without an anchor in what had to be a turbulent passage in her life. I can't fault the lady for her reticence, but in this as in several other areas, it would have behooved Miss Eudora to have let others guide her in preparing these talks so as to answer more questions:
It is our inward journey that leads us through time – forward or back, seldom in a straight line, most often spiraling. Each of us is moving, changing, with respect to others. As we discover, we remember; remembering, we discover; and most intensely do we experience this when our separate journeys converge. Our living experience at those meeting points is one of the charged dramatic fields of fiction.
Well, and therein the rub: It was the last thing she ever wanted to do, answer questions, and it's also why she wrote such marvelous stories, to answer them all unasked:
Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it’s an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole.
Miss Eudora Welty, thank you for all of it, and a safe journey into the future for your gifts to us who follow along behind you.
April 25, 2024
There are many very good reviews of this book on Goodreads so I don’t need to add a lot in this review. Eudora Welty is a wonderful Southern writer whose life spanned much of the 20th century. This writer’s memoir (part autobiography/part her life in writing) is a story of her happy family life in small town Mississippi, her parent’s backgrounds, growing up in a house with books and readers, libraries, primary education and then higher education. All of that is pretty standard Southern memoir but includes many things that directed her inner life and the formation of the writer as she evolved.
As in her fiction, her writing is very beautiful. I love that she and a friend were corrected at school when “I might could” popped out of her friend’s mouth. That phrase can still be heard where I live in the Upper South, and I’d still be inclined to correct the kid.
As in her fiction, her writing is very beautiful. I love that she and a friend were corrected at school when “I might could” popped out of her friend’s mouth. That phrase can still be heard where I live in the Upper South, and I’d still be inclined to correct the kid.
December 10, 2015
One Writer's Beginnings: Eudora Welty's Very Private Memoir
I take literary pilgrimages to Mississippi to very different worlds. There is the world of William Faulkner in the hard scrabble land around Oxford, New Albany, Holly Springs, and Pontotoc. Then there is Jackson, Mississippi. Considerably more urban. An emphasis on the awareness of society and appearances. The world of Eudora Welty. Although the stories told by her frequently are those of the isolated and the outcast.
For years I have been enamored of the novels and stories of Eudora Welty. I have read most of them. Only a few stories here and there still wait for me. It has been my experience that I loved them all. From "Why I Live at the P.O." All the way through The Optimist's Daughter and my favorite of all, Losing Battles.
Above all things, I have recognized that Welty has the ability to capture in words precise depictions of places and people with the same artistry as the best of photographers. It comes as no surprise that Welty, a superb writer was also an extraordinary photographer. She tells of her documenting the American south during the Great Depression. One only has to look at her photographs in One Time, One Place: Mississippi in the Depression to grasp what Welty meant when she said "A Good snapshot keeps a moment from running away."
Welty's prose has kept many moments from running away. One Writer's Beginnings is no exception. This small book of three essays is a gem capturing Eudora's childhood, raised by loving parents. Her love of books fostered by her parents. And the tragedies of life experienced.
The tone of this quiet but evocative writing invites one to think of returning home. Sitting on a front porch with a favorite aunt. Hanging on every word of times gone by and the way things were. It is a life well lived, attuned to listening to others, of observing, seeing the life around you and the ability to find one's voice to capture it all.
This is a portrait of a very private woman. Welty closes her lesson on finding a voice in this manner:
Here, I think Miss Welty has been less than candid. True, her life as a child was quite sheltered. There is no doubt that Eudora Welty lived a daring life. What is contained in this small jewel reveals the daring that Miss Welty held within. For a closer look at Miss Welty, I highly recommend Eudora Welty: A Biography by Suzanne Marrs.
Although I do not often recommend audio books, by all means experience the joy of Eudora Welty reading One Writer's Beginnings. You, too, may find yourself immersed in storys told by a favorite aunt who has welcomed you home. Enjoy the shade of a wide porch where the hot summer sun never seems to reach.
I take literary pilgrimages to Mississippi to very different worlds. There is the world of William Faulkner in the hard scrabble land around Oxford, New Albany, Holly Springs, and Pontotoc. Then there is Jackson, Mississippi. Considerably more urban. An emphasis on the awareness of society and appearances. The world of Eudora Welty. Although the stories told by her frequently are those of the isolated and the outcast.
For years I have been enamored of the novels and stories of Eudora Welty. I have read most of them. Only a few stories here and there still wait for me. It has been my experience that I loved them all. From "Why I Live at the P.O." All the way through The Optimist's Daughter and my favorite of all, Losing Battles.
Above all things, I have recognized that Welty has the ability to capture in words precise depictions of places and people with the same artistry as the best of photographers. It comes as no surprise that Welty, a superb writer was also an extraordinary photographer. She tells of her documenting the American south during the Great Depression. One only has to look at her photographs in One Time, One Place: Mississippi in the Depression to grasp what Welty meant when she said "A Good snapshot keeps a moment from running away."
Welty's prose has kept many moments from running away. One Writer's Beginnings is no exception. This small book of three essays is a gem capturing Eudora's childhood, raised by loving parents. Her love of books fostered by her parents. And the tragedies of life experienced.
The tone of this quiet but evocative writing invites one to think of returning home. Sitting on a front porch with a favorite aunt. Hanging on every word of times gone by and the way things were. It is a life well lived, attuned to listening to others, of observing, seeing the life around you and the ability to find one's voice to capture it all.
This is a portrait of a very private woman. Welty closes her lesson on finding a voice in this manner:
“I am a writer who came from a sheltered life. A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within.”
Here, I think Miss Welty has been less than candid. True, her life as a child was quite sheltered. There is no doubt that Eudora Welty lived a daring life. What is contained in this small jewel reveals the daring that Miss Welty held within. For a closer look at Miss Welty, I highly recommend Eudora Welty: A Biography by Suzanne Marrs.
Although I do not often recommend audio books, by all means experience the joy of Eudora Welty reading One Writer's Beginnings. You, too, may find yourself immersed in storys told by a favorite aunt who has welcomed you home. Enjoy the shade of a wide porch where the hot summer sun never seems to reach.
December 13, 2015
As my initial comment on re-reading One Writer's Beginnings, I will say that I have found Welty's thoughts on family (and especially her parents' influences) and her personal theories of writing even more interesting on this second reading. So many sections seemed to jump out for me---her relationship with her mother, in particular, and her slowly developing thoughts on being a writer.
As I had just read/viewed her book, Country Churchyards, this quote was especially meaningful for me.
Photography taught me that to be able to capture
transience, by being ready to click the shutter at the
crucial moment, was the greatest need I had. Making
pictures of people in all sorts of situations, I
learned that every feeling waits upon its gesture;
and I had to be prepared to recognize this moment
when I saw it. These were things a story writer
needed to know. And I felt the need to hold transient
life in words--there's so much more of life that only
words can convey--strongly enough to last me as long
as I lived. The direction my mind took was a writer's
direction from the start, not a photographer's, or
a recorder's. (pp 84-85)
I do recommend this small, but packed book to all admirers of Welty's work. The book is comprised of three lectures Welty presented in The William E. Massey Sr. Lectures in the History of American Civilization in 1983 (inaugural series).
[Initial review, June 2012 This book of three speeches by Eudora Welty makes a wonderful companion piece to [book:The Collected Stories|12577] which I'm currently reading with friends. The influence of family and memory are important to Welty who gives us pictures of some of the momentous times in her life and the people who made it so. I believe I will read this again someday. It is a short book, but it is full of her life and beliefs about life and writing.]
As I had just read/viewed her book, Country Churchyards, this quote was especially meaningful for me.
Photography taught me that to be able to capture
transience, by being ready to click the shutter at the
crucial moment, was the greatest need I had. Making
pictures of people in all sorts of situations, I
learned that every feeling waits upon its gesture;
and I had to be prepared to recognize this moment
when I saw it. These were things a story writer
needed to know. And I felt the need to hold transient
life in words--there's so much more of life that only
words can convey--strongly enough to last me as long
as I lived. The direction my mind took was a writer's
direction from the start, not a photographer's, or
a recorder's. (pp 84-85)
I do recommend this small, but packed book to all admirers of Welty's work. The book is comprised of three lectures Welty presented in The William E. Massey Sr. Lectures in the History of American Civilization in 1983 (inaugural series).
[Initial review, June 2012 This book of three speeches by Eudora Welty makes a wonderful companion piece to [book:The Collected Stories|12577] which I'm currently reading with friends. The influence of family and memory are important to Welty who gives us pictures of some of the momentous times in her life and the people who made it so. I believe I will read this again someday. It is a short book, but it is full of her life and beliefs about life and writing.]
December 1, 2015
This was not written as an autobiography, but rather as 3 short speeches given at Harvard University in 1983. But taken together, they form what in my mind all autobiographies should be: a reminiscence of early youth and impressions, recollections of family and friends, and acknowledgement of what formed the writer and why. No name dropping, no sordid tell-all, no getting back at people who hurt you. This slim little volume of 114 pages told me all I needed to know about Miss Welty and her world. It made me nostalgic for times, places and people I've never known. A perfect book for fans of her gentle, humorous fiction and short stories.
The last paragraph is worth sharing.
"As you have seen, I am a writer who came of a sheltered life. A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within."
The last paragraph is worth sharing.
"As you have seen, I am a writer who came of a sheltered life. A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within."
December 1, 2015
Eudora Welty delivered three lectures at Harvard University in 1983 which were developed into her charming memoir, "One Writer's Beginnings". She explored events in her own life that were important in becoming a writer.
In the first section, "Listening", she tells about the importance of books in her childhood home, her parents teaching her to read, singing, and listening to the stories of the ladies in Jackson, Mississippi. Welty writes, "Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening FOR them is something more acute than listening TO them. I suppose it's an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are THERE. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole." She seemed to be a very observant child, remembering details about how various people communicated--a strict principal, the evangelists that visited Jackson, and the fictional comedy of the silent movies.
"Learning to See" was the title of the second section which was mainly about trips with her family to visit relatives in West Virginia and Ohio. Welty is known to have a strong sense of place in her writing, and she expresses it in her memories of visits to her grandparents and her mother's lively brothers.
In the third section, "Finding a Voice", Welty writes about the things that sparked the writing of her stories. It might be a phrase from a conversation, or a person she met. One of her first jobs was working as a photographer and publicity agent for the Works Progress Administration, an occupation that also required her to be very observant. When she wrote "Death of a Traveling Salesman" she realized that her real subject was human relationships. Writing stories also helped her discover connections in her own experiences and in her memories of her parents. She also incorporated mythology into some of her works.
The tone of the memoir is conversational. I could picture myself on Miss Eudora's front porch swing as I listened to this gentle lady who had wonderful gifts of observation.
In the first section, "Listening", she tells about the importance of books in her childhood home, her parents teaching her to read, singing, and listening to the stories of the ladies in Jackson, Mississippi. Welty writes, "Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening FOR them is something more acute than listening TO them. I suppose it's an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are THERE. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole." She seemed to be a very observant child, remembering details about how various people communicated--a strict principal, the evangelists that visited Jackson, and the fictional comedy of the silent movies.
"Learning to See" was the title of the second section which was mainly about trips with her family to visit relatives in West Virginia and Ohio. Welty is known to have a strong sense of place in her writing, and she expresses it in her memories of visits to her grandparents and her mother's lively brothers.
In the third section, "Finding a Voice", Welty writes about the things that sparked the writing of her stories. It might be a phrase from a conversation, or a person she met. One of her first jobs was working as a photographer and publicity agent for the Works Progress Administration, an occupation that also required her to be very observant. When she wrote "Death of a Traveling Salesman" she realized that her real subject was human relationships. Writing stories also helped her discover connections in her own experiences and in her memories of her parents. She also incorporated mythology into some of her works.
The tone of the memoir is conversational. I could picture myself on Miss Eudora's front porch swing as I listened to this gentle lady who had wonderful gifts of observation.
May 13, 2024
Eudora Welty (1909-2001) hailed from Jackson, Mississippi and lived most of her life in the house where she was born. Known primarily as a writer of short stories, Welty won the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for The Optimist’s Daughter, of which I have read as part of my lifetime Pulitzer challenge. Most writers write about what they know, so I thought that it would be fascinating to learn how a woman who lived to be nearly one hundred years old at a time and place when many women did not attend college chose to become a writer. One Writer’s Beginnings was originally a series of lectures delivered at the University of Wisconsin, the writer’s Alma mater. In these remarks to students, readers discover what childhood experiences lead Eudora Welty to write.
Welty’s hails from.a family that has lived in the United States since before the revolution. Her father came from a region in Hocking, Ohio, which is lovely. I know this because this is the area where my kids’ school chooses for its eighth grade graduation trip. Dearth with waterfalls and hiking trails, Hocking is a slice of Eden. Yet, Christian Welty chose to make his own way in the world and moved to West Virginia of all places. The moved was perhaps divinely ordained because there he met Chessie Andrews, who he would eventually marry. Welty’s father is the optimist who she received her life ideas from. He gave his fiancée a choice of two places to live as their next grand adventure: the Thousand Islands near Nova Scotia or Jackson, Mississippi. Chessie, an incurable pessimist detesting water selected Mississippi, and so the couple would settle and build a home and family. It was there that Eudora was born and would spend the majority of her life.
Many of Welty’s stories contain a school teacher as a heroine. Her mother made the decision to put her oldest daughter in first grade at age five because she could already read. This was over one hundred years ago. Skipping grades in rural community was normal if a child was competent. Eudora enjoyed school, especially English and Latin grammar, my hero. Accelerated in school, she began college at age fifteen. The country was close to a depression, something no one in Mississippi could foresee. Upon graduation from Wisconsin, Eudora returned home. She knew she wanted to be a writer. She loved telling stories based on the influences of her life. Her father never appreciated fiction writing but chose to give his daughter a chance. Her first job was with the Works Progress Association as she told stories of the people in her state affected by the depression. The ability to tell others’ stories instilled confidence in Welty, which eventually lead to a lifetime of writing.
It would not be until ten years later that she published her first story, the Death of a Traveling Salesman. By chance she met the people who would become her agents and lifelong friends around this time. As an up and coming writer, having a good agent is the golden ticket, and Eudora Welty found more often than not that her work had landed on the desk of editors in New York. After the publication of her story collection the Golden Apples, she was on her way to enjoying a long writing career. She only glosses over this in these talks because the subject had been how she got her start and her myriad of influences. Those wanting to know her actual writing process will be disappointed. This book is about how Welty got her start, not how she writes. The writing life is for another memoir.
From this published talk, it is clear that Welty’s parents were like yin and yang and each effected where her life would take her. Growing up in the rural south, the only entertainment was reading and creating games with one’s siblings and neighbors and occasionally a family trip to the movies. Once a year the circus came to time and the Welty family used the summer to visit family in the north. All of these experiences come to find themselves in Welty’s writings in some way, shape, or form. Modern authors will pen memoirs about how they write. These are among some of my favorites works to read. Welty defines how her childhood experiences melded her into the writer that she became. Although not what I expected, I found these accounts to be fascinating. A childhood taking place over one hundred years ago is history after all, a time of silent films and cross country train travel. These vignettes formed a woman who came out of the rural south to become a writer, and what a prolific and renown writer she turned out to be.
4 stars
Welty’s hails from.a family that has lived in the United States since before the revolution. Her father came from a region in Hocking, Ohio, which is lovely. I know this because this is the area where my kids’ school chooses for its eighth grade graduation trip. Dearth with waterfalls and hiking trails, Hocking is a slice of Eden. Yet, Christian Welty chose to make his own way in the world and moved to West Virginia of all places. The moved was perhaps divinely ordained because there he met Chessie Andrews, who he would eventually marry. Welty’s father is the optimist who she received her life ideas from. He gave his fiancée a choice of two places to live as their next grand adventure: the Thousand Islands near Nova Scotia or Jackson, Mississippi. Chessie, an incurable pessimist detesting water selected Mississippi, and so the couple would settle and build a home and family. It was there that Eudora was born and would spend the majority of her life.
Many of Welty’s stories contain a school teacher as a heroine. Her mother made the decision to put her oldest daughter in first grade at age five because she could already read. This was over one hundred years ago. Skipping grades in rural community was normal if a child was competent. Eudora enjoyed school, especially English and Latin grammar, my hero. Accelerated in school, she began college at age fifteen. The country was close to a depression, something no one in Mississippi could foresee. Upon graduation from Wisconsin, Eudora returned home. She knew she wanted to be a writer. She loved telling stories based on the influences of her life. Her father never appreciated fiction writing but chose to give his daughter a chance. Her first job was with the Works Progress Association as she told stories of the people in her state affected by the depression. The ability to tell others’ stories instilled confidence in Welty, which eventually lead to a lifetime of writing.
It would not be until ten years later that she published her first story, the Death of a Traveling Salesman. By chance she met the people who would become her agents and lifelong friends around this time. As an up and coming writer, having a good agent is the golden ticket, and Eudora Welty found more often than not that her work had landed on the desk of editors in New York. After the publication of her story collection the Golden Apples, she was on her way to enjoying a long writing career. She only glosses over this in these talks because the subject had been how she got her start and her myriad of influences. Those wanting to know her actual writing process will be disappointed. This book is about how Welty got her start, not how she writes. The writing life is for another memoir.
From this published talk, it is clear that Welty’s parents were like yin and yang and each effected where her life would take her. Growing up in the rural south, the only entertainment was reading and creating games with one’s siblings and neighbors and occasionally a family trip to the movies. Once a year the circus came to time and the Welty family used the summer to visit family in the north. All of these experiences come to find themselves in Welty’s writings in some way, shape, or form. Modern authors will pen memoirs about how they write. These are among some of my favorites works to read. Welty defines how her childhood experiences melded her into the writer that she became. Although not what I expected, I found these accounts to be fascinating. A childhood taking place over one hundred years ago is history after all, a time of silent films and cross country train travel. These vignettes formed a woman who came out of the rural south to become a writer, and what a prolific and renown writer she turned out to be.
4 stars
March 5, 2025
Fair warning for anyone who is primarily interested in Welty's perspective on writing and development as a writer. The vast majority of that content is in the final third of the book.
This book tells the story of Welty's childhood and coming of age. It is written with vivid description and deft narrative technique. This is my first book by Welty and I am now more likely to seek out her other work. This book demonstrates that she can Write!
The third reason someone might want to read this book in particular is that the technology of the time, the food, the household furnishings, the school experience are thoroughly described. This memoir is a bit of a time capsule.
The book is slow paced. On the other hand it is short and full of gems of language and style.
This book tells the story of Welty's childhood and coming of age. It is written with vivid description and deft narrative technique. This is my first book by Welty and I am now more likely to seek out her other work. This book demonstrates that she can Write!
The third reason someone might want to read this book in particular is that the technology of the time, the food, the household furnishings, the school experience are thoroughly described. This memoir is a bit of a time capsule.
The book is slow paced. On the other hand it is short and full of gems of language and style.
November 4, 2020
Born in Jackson, Missouri in 1909, this autobiography- memoir was, in 1983, given as part of Harvard’s William E. Massey Sr. Lecture series, in three separate talks to students eager to learn from her years of writing.
Reading this brought me back in time to the stories my paternal grandparents each shared with me, the stories of their childhood and even those of their parents and grandparents. Even though I learned to read young – taught by my older brother when he first learned to read in school – my grandfather, especially, was the one who instilled a love of reading in me. This reminded me of sitting beside my grandfather as he typed out his poetry, and helping him choose his words. I can still hear the click of the keys on the typewriter; still see the small desk and the old typewriter on that small surface, and the feeling of being included, and understanding, even then, that language was important when writing anything.
”Children, like animals,” Welty writes, “use all their senses to discover the world.”
In the Introduction, Natasha Trethewey says that each time she read One Writer’s Beginnings that each time I meet myself in her words. Even though this is the first time I’ve read this – although it’s been on my list to read for years – I shared that feeling, those moments where I could relate so much to the feelings she expressed, the joy of that first box camera, even though I’m sure they were entirely different makes and years. The stories of her father giving them lessons on life, the kind that end up being a part of you.
”It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming up of themselves like grass. Yet regardless of where they came from, I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them—with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself. “
Her stories on reading, of being read to are charming, and wonderful. Her memories of visiting their local library are priceless. Her thoughts on writing, formed by her love of reading, and being read to are just lovely to read. She also shares her memories of her summer trips to visit her grandparents in West Virginia and Ohio, and which brought back so many memories to me.
”Ever since I was first read to, then started reading to myself, there has never been a line read that I didn’t hear. As my eyes followed the sentence, a voice was saying it silently to me. It isn’t my mother’s voice, or the voice of any person I can identify, certainly not my own. It is human, but inward, and it is inwardly that I listen to it. It is to me the voice of the story or the poem itself. The cadence, whatever it is that asks you to believe, the feeling that resides in the printed word, reaches me through the reader-voice. I have supposed, but never found out, that this is the case with all readers — to read as listeners — and with all writers, to write as listeners . . . The sound of what falls on the page begins the process of testing it for truth, for me…When I write and the sound of it comes back to my ears, then I act to make my changes. I have always trusted this voice.”
A gem for readers and writers, alike.
Published: 20 Oct 2020
Many thanks for the ARC provided by Scribner
June 13, 2017
A Southern writer, Eudora Welty, grew up in Jackson, MS in the early part of the Twentieth Century. This book is a series of three lectures she gave at Harvard. The name of the three lectures almost says it all: 1. Listening, 2. Learning to See, and 3. Finding a Voice. She gave these lectures in 1983 and so it is that the world I lived in as a small child in the South does touch gently at times the world Eudora writes about. Before technology things changed slowly.
On memory:
"But it was not until I began to write, as I seriously did only when I reached my twenties, that I found the world out there revealing, because (as with my father now), memory had become attached to seeing, love had added itself to discovery, and because I recognized in my own continuing longing to keep going, the need I carried inside me to know--the apprehension, first, and then the passion, to connect myself to it."
"I was always my own teacher."
On her mother:
"She suffered perhaps more than an ordinary number of blows in her long life. We, her children, like our father before us, had to learn the lesson that we would never be able to console her for any of them; especially could we not console her for what happened to ourselves."
Much food for thought here. How do writer's learn to write? I try to imagine the best of them taking a writing course and I cannot imagine it. English, learning English, and how it works, yes, but writing, no. Eudora would say that a writer needs to listen and then see before they find a voice. Therefore, when we teach our children to listen and see and remember we are teaching them to write. Hang the adverbs!
On memory:
"But it was not until I began to write, as I seriously did only when I reached my twenties, that I found the world out there revealing, because (as with my father now), memory had become attached to seeing, love had added itself to discovery, and because I recognized in my own continuing longing to keep going, the need I carried inside me to know--the apprehension, first, and then the passion, to connect myself to it."
"I was always my own teacher."
On her mother:
"She suffered perhaps more than an ordinary number of blows in her long life. We, her children, like our father before us, had to learn the lesson that we would never be able to console her for any of them; especially could we not console her for what happened to ourselves."
Much food for thought here. How do writer's learn to write? I try to imagine the best of them taking a writing course and I cannot imagine it. English, learning English, and how it works, yes, but writing, no. Eudora would say that a writer needs to listen and then see before they find a voice. Therefore, when we teach our children to listen and see and remember we are teaching them to write. Hang the adverbs!
September 14, 2013
I've read this book three times. Once as a young professor with an admiration for Eudora Welty. Next as a beginning memoirist myself. Last week I read the book again as a professor teaching memoir to honors students. Every reading has allowed me to notice new things about Welty.
This time I focused on the beautiful, dense sentences in this short book. It took as long to read the 100 pages of this book as many 300-page books take. The students recognized this density also, and we deconstructed the text together, with appreciation for this one section especially: "It took Latin to thrust me into bona fide alliance with words in their true meaning. Learning Latin (once I was free of Caesar) fed my love for words upon words, words in continuation and modification, and the beautiful, sober, accretion of a sentence." What a lovely marriage of meaning and form.
The book grew out of a series of three lectures on three different topics: Listening, seeing, and finding a voice. The impact of reading it closely leaves the reader listening, shimmering, and singing. Welty knows how to connect her senses to the readers'.
I especially shivered at the last line of this book. Not once but every time I read it. I loved it so much that I made it the epigraph of my own memoir: "The sheltered life can be a daring one as well. For all serious daring starts from within."
This time I focused on the beautiful, dense sentences in this short book. It took as long to read the 100 pages of this book as many 300-page books take. The students recognized this density also, and we deconstructed the text together, with appreciation for this one section especially: "It took Latin to thrust me into bona fide alliance with words in their true meaning. Learning Latin (once I was free of Caesar) fed my love for words upon words, words in continuation and modification, and the beautiful, sober, accretion of a sentence." What a lovely marriage of meaning and form.
The book grew out of a series of three lectures on three different topics: Listening, seeing, and finding a voice. The impact of reading it closely leaves the reader listening, shimmering, and singing. Welty knows how to connect her senses to the readers'.
I especially shivered at the last line of this book. Not once but every time I read it. I loved it so much that I made it the epigraph of my own memoir: "The sheltered life can be a daring one as well. For all serious daring starts from within."
July 4, 2011
These speeches-turned-into-print should be of interest to writers and to those who love Eudora Welty's writings, especially her short stories.
Like Eudora, I was born in the South and went to a university in Wisconsin (though she doesn't spend too much time talking of her time there), so there was a lot here to 'locate' (a word she uses twice in interesting ways) me. She was born in 1909, so of course there were differences too. But reading of the 'feel' of her summer trips in the family car (to visit her grandparents), I was reminded that some things never seem to change.
Welty mentions, as instrumental in her young reading life, a 10-volume set given to her as a child called Our Wonder World. I know I didn't own the set, but I believe I must have read some of it, or all of it, or at least something very similar, from the library, as so much of what she recalled was familiar to me.
It's always nice to see how a writer you 'know' interprets his or her past, as they look back and discover what brought them to where they are now.
Like Eudora, I was born in the South and went to a university in Wisconsin (though she doesn't spend too much time talking of her time there), so there was a lot here to 'locate' (a word she uses twice in interesting ways) me. She was born in 1909, so of course there were differences too. But reading of the 'feel' of her summer trips in the family car (to visit her grandparents), I was reminded that some things never seem to change.
Welty mentions, as instrumental in her young reading life, a 10-volume set given to her as a child called Our Wonder World. I know I didn't own the set, but I believe I must have read some of it, or all of it, or at least something very similar, from the library, as so much of what she recalled was familiar to me.
It's always nice to see how a writer you 'know' interprets his or her past, as they look back and discover what brought them to where they are now.
September 25, 2020
This book stems from a series of three lectures delivered by Eudora Welty at Harvard in 1983-- I am reviewing a reissue with a new introduction. I never read the book when it was originally released, and in fact know very little about Welty. It was fascinating to learn about what it was like growing up at the beginning of the last century: the car and train rides, the enjoyment of the Victrola, the piano teacher who swatted students' hands when they made a mistake. Welty also provided insight into what makes a writer, and how her observations translated into some of her fictional characters. I would definitely like to read more of Welty's fiction now, and appreciate the publisher and Netgalley giving me the opportunity to review this ARC.
October 23, 2020
A good book about the life and profession of a writer.
June 15, 2013
I knew absolutely nothing about Eudora Welty when I picked up this book. I quite enjoyed her simple retelling of her past, and how she realized she wanted to be a writer. A quick, interesting read.
June 27, 2013
A book to put in your treasure chest.
This book is based on a series of lectures (three) given at Harvard in 1983, when Welty was 74 years old. The three sections are titled: LISTENING, LEARNING TO SEE, and FINDING A VOICE.
Here's a snippet from an opening paragraph:
When I was young enough to still spend a long time buttoning my shoes in the morning, I'd listen toward the hall; Daddy upstairs
was shaving in the bathroom and Mother downstairs was frying the bacon. They would begin whistling back and forth to each
other up and down the stairwell.
Can you imagine?!?!? She had me hooked right at the get-go.
Nowadays, we hear of people having their house "staged" when preparing to put it on the market. The idea is that you present the house in a way in which a potential buyer can see themselves living in the house. Well, Ms Welty can "stage" a book. Though her world was about as distant from mine as the man-in-the-moon, reading this book made me WANT to be there with her, in Jackson, Mississippi (pre WW I) , while her mother read to her in a rocking chair where they shared seating, riding on the train with her father, watching the flying countryside, visiting Jackson's Carnagie Library where Mrs. Calloway, the librarian guarded the library with a dragon's eye.
I understand that there is an audio version of this book, read by the author herself. I am anxious to find it.
This book is based on a series of lectures (three) given at Harvard in 1983, when Welty was 74 years old. The three sections are titled: LISTENING, LEARNING TO SEE, and FINDING A VOICE.
Here's a snippet from an opening paragraph:
When I was young enough to still spend a long time buttoning my shoes in the morning, I'd listen toward the hall; Daddy upstairs
was shaving in the bathroom and Mother downstairs was frying the bacon. They would begin whistling back and forth to each
other up and down the stairwell.
Can you imagine?!?!? She had me hooked right at the get-go.
Nowadays, we hear of people having their house "staged" when preparing to put it on the market. The idea is that you present the house in a way in which a potential buyer can see themselves living in the house. Well, Ms Welty can "stage" a book. Though her world was about as distant from mine as the man-in-the-moon, reading this book made me WANT to be there with her, in Jackson, Mississippi (pre WW I) , while her mother read to her in a rocking chair where they shared seating, riding on the train with her father, watching the flying countryside, visiting Jackson's Carnagie Library where Mrs. Calloway, the librarian guarded the library with a dragon's eye.
I understand that there is an audio version of this book, read by the author herself. I am anxious to find it.
May 3, 2013
Writer tips galore.
"The cadence, whatever it is, " Eudora Welty wrote, "that asks you to believe, the feeling that resides in the printed word, reaches me through the reader-voice." She goes on to talk about this voice she hears when she reads or writes and it's funny, because you hear her voice loud and clear when you read this memoir. I kept imagining her sitting on the front porch with a pitcher of iced tea.
Maybe I'm biased because I've lived in the Appalachian mountains and I've lived down south, but I enjoyed reading about her southern and mountain life in this book. Part III was my favorite, where she stopped giving too much detail about her family to go a little more inward and talk about her journey.
"The cadence, whatever it is, " Eudora Welty wrote, "that asks you to believe, the feeling that resides in the printed word, reaches me through the reader-voice." She goes on to talk about this voice she hears when she reads or writes and it's funny, because you hear her voice loud and clear when you read this memoir. I kept imagining her sitting on the front porch with a pitcher of iced tea.
Maybe I'm biased because I've lived in the Appalachian mountains and I've lived down south, but I enjoyed reading about her southern and mountain life in this book. Part III was my favorite, where she stopped giving too much detail about her family to go a little more inward and talk about her journey.
February 21, 2013
If you've never heard Eudora Welty speak, well then my friend, you've never heard Eudora Welty speak.
I found an audiobook copy of this at the library and, liking to hear authors read their own work or talk about their experiences, I picked up this aptly named title. One Writer's Beginnings is of Welty's beginnings in the deep south, early 20th century Mississippi. These lectures, performed by Welty toward in the latter part of her life for a Harvard audience, have a free-flow feel and yet they are mostly scripted. They are simple, occasionally seem to meander, but are incredibly endearing.
I found an audiobook copy of this at the library and, liking to hear authors read their own work or talk about their experiences, I picked up this aptly named title. One Writer's Beginnings is of Welty's beginnings in the deep south, early 20th century Mississippi. These lectures, performed by Welty toward in the latter part of her life for a Harvard audience, have a free-flow feel and yet they are mostly scripted. They are simple, occasionally seem to meander, but are incredibly endearing.
February 11, 2013
To be fair: I hadn't read any of Eudora Welty's fiction before reading this book, her autobiography. That being said, I still don't think many of the stories told in this book would be of interest to casual readers. Some of the details given are interesting in how they present/discuss an early-20th century lifestyle, and Welty does present a few interesting ideas - for example, "one secret is liable to be revealed in the place of another that is harder to tell, and the substitute secret when nakedly exposed is often the more appalling," (17). But aside from that, most of the book is just dull. The autobiography's themes are discussed at length in the last few pages of the book, but are very unclear and frequently discarded before then, so that the reader is often unsure what to be looking for (apparently it was "confluence"). It often seems as if Welty includes many stories and details not because they pertain to the themes of the book, or because they necessarily influenced her as a writer, but just because she knew them.
February 15, 2021
This was a lovely introduction to Eudora Welty. I loved reading about her literary rich childhood and her parents’ influence. Now I need to decide where to begin with her works of fiction. I’m excited to read more.
January 10, 2021
Leggendo le prime pagine di Come sono diventata una scrittrice si resta un po’ interdetti perché, invece di un manuale di scrittura, è “semplicemente” la vita di Eudora Welty. Ma basta poco per entrare nella sua filosofia e capire che nel titolo c’è già il primo suggerimento: scrittori si diventa. Scrivere è scoprire «la sequenzialità dell’esperienza» e il libro contiene le relazioni di causa ed effetto che l’hanno resa una scrittrice. Eudora racconta che da bambina tendeva l’orecchio alle storie; tendere l’orecchio, precisa, è diverso da ascoltare: vuol dire sentirsi parte attiva di una narrazione, avere il bisogno di cogliere il collegamento tra un fatto e l’altro per scoprire come quella materia si connette al flusso della vita. Ascoltando i pettegolezzi della cameriera, le storie delle amiche della madre, i discorsi sussurrati dai fratelli, Eudora impara che una storia è fatta da una serie di scene e ogni scena è piena di «indizi, segnali, suggerimenti e promesse»; amare le storie vuol dire imparare a leggere i segnali, cercando la verità dietro la menzogna.
E poi la fotografia: Eudora Welty e lo sguardo obliquo
E poi la fotografia: Eudora Welty e lo sguardo obliquo
August 2, 2022
This summer I had the chance to see Mary Chapin Carpenter in concert. It was one of those magical post-Covid-lockdown performances, with the audience and performers so happy to see each other again. I was enchanted with the whole experience, and when Carpenter happened to mention Eudora Welty's One Writer's Beginnings as one of her very favorite books, it lit a fire under me to find the book and give it a read.
I'm so glad I did. One Writer's Beginnings is an equally enchanting experience, the story of Welty's childhood in Jackson, Mississippi, in the early years of the 20th century. Welty paints a vivid picture of that place and time, the devoted nurturing she received from both her parents, and the abiding love for stories that eventually led to her career as a writer. For such a short memoir, Welty offers up a remarkable degree of specificity, including an anecdote about her father waking her up when she was only a toddler, to see Halley's Comet pass in 1910. It was this scene that inspired Carpenter's song "Halley Came to Jackson."
In any case, One Writer's Beginnings would be a fascinating read for writers, history buffs, or anyone who simply shares that deep love for a good story that makes writers like Welty and Carpenter sparkle.
I'm so glad I did. One Writer's Beginnings is an equally enchanting experience, the story of Welty's childhood in Jackson, Mississippi, in the early years of the 20th century. Welty paints a vivid picture of that place and time, the devoted nurturing she received from both her parents, and the abiding love for stories that eventually led to her career as a writer. For such a short memoir, Welty offers up a remarkable degree of specificity, including an anecdote about her father waking her up when she was only a toddler, to see Halley's Comet pass in 1910. It was this scene that inspired Carpenter's song "Halley Came to Jackson."
In any case, One Writer's Beginnings would be a fascinating read for writers, history buffs, or anyone who simply shares that deep love for a good story that makes writers like Welty and Carpenter sparkle.
April 11, 2022
Eudora Welty born in 1909 in Jackson Mississippi. She was the oldest of three children. She remained in the home of her parents as an adult.
Growing up family was very important to her. She loved taking pictures with her box camera, which taught her every feeling awaits a gesture.
Her writing and stories are biased on memories of events and persons in her life.
Her honors include a Pulitzer Prize, the American book award for fiction and the Gold Medal for the Novel given by the American Academy and institute of Arts and Letters for her entire work of fiction.
Growing up family was very important to her. She loved taking pictures with her box camera, which taught her every feeling awaits a gesture.
Her writing and stories are biased on memories of events and persons in her life.
Her honors include a Pulitzer Prize, the American book award for fiction and the Gold Medal for the Novel given by the American Academy and institute of Arts and Letters for her entire work of fiction.
July 13, 2018
I very much enjoy Eudora Welty's fiction, but know comparatively little about her childhood. I read the wonderful What There Is To Say We Have Said a couple of years ago, which features much of the correspondence between Welty and another favourite author of mine, William Maxwell. This autobiographical work, which is composed of a wealth of memories largely from Welty's Mississippi childhood, works as a wonderful companion volume.
Of One Writer's Beginnings, William Maxwell writes, 'It is all wonderful... The parts of the book that are about her family... are by turns hilarious and affecting. They are a kind of present... from Miss Welty to her audience.' Penelope Lively believes it to be a piece of 'entrancing reading', and Paul Binding writes in the New Statesman: 'A writer for whom "genius" is for once a not inappropriate word... A book of great sensitivity - as controlled and yet aspiring as a lyric poem.'
In One Writer's Beginnings, which was first published in 1984, Welty decided to tell her story in one 'continuous thread of revelation'. The book provides, says its blurb, '... an exploration of memory by one of America's finest writers, whose many honours include the Pulitzer Prize, the American Book Award for Fiction, and the Gold Medal for the novel.' This book consists of three essays - 'Listening', 'Learning to See', and 'Finding a Voice' - which have been transcribed from a set of three lectures which Welty gave at Harvard University in April 1983.
When 'Listening' begins, Welty's words set the scene immediately: 'In our house on North Congress Street in Jackson, Mississippi, where I was born, the oldest of three children, in 1909, we grew up to the striking of clocks.' Throughout, Welty's voice is lyrical, candid, and often quite moving. She reveals her deep love of books, which was present even when she was a tiny child. 'I learned,' she writes, 'from the age of two or three that any room in our house, at any time of day, was there to read in, or be read to.' Welty's writing is particularly beautiful when she discusses her love of stories: 'It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming up of themselves like grass. Yet regardless of where they came from, I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them - with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself. Still illiterate, I was ready for them, committed to all the reading I could give them.'
In a series of vignettes, Welty talks about stargazing, singing, childhood illness, learning the alphabet, religion, schooling, and the quirks of her in some ways unconventional parents, amongst other things. The imagery which she conjures up is often lovely; for instance: 'All children in those small-town, unhurried days had a vast inner life going on in the movies. Whole families attended together in the evenings, at least once a week, and children were allowed to go without chaperone in the long summer afternoons - schoolmates with their best friends, pairs of little girls trotting on foot the short distance through the park to town under their Japanese parasols.' When she discusses the travels which she went on with her family each summer, she writes of their positive effect upon her later writing: 'I think now, in looking back on these summer trips - this one and a number later, made in the car and on the train - that another element in them must have been influencing my mind. The trips were wholes unto themselves. They were stories. Not only in form, but their taking on direction, movement, development, change. They changed something in my life: each trip made its particular revelation, though I could not have found words for it. But with the passage of time, I could look back on them and see them bringing me news, discoveries, premonitions, promises - I still can; they still do.'
One Writer's Beginnings spans Welty's childhood, and includes comparatively brief reflections about her time at college, and the early days of her writing career. She is insightful about the creation of her characters, and the knowledge which one must have as an author to create enough depth. 'Characters take on a life sometimes by luck,' writes Welty, 'but I suspect it is when you can write most entirely out of yourself, inside the skin, heart, mind, and soul of a person who is not yourself, that a character becomes in his own right another human being on the page.'
One Writer's Beginnings is a beautifully written celebration of stories, of Welty's own, and of those which filled her girlhood. I was pulled in immediately, transported to the Deep South in the early twentieth century. This is a joyous account, filled with depth and insight. Welty's voice is utterly charming, and sometimes quite profound. I shall close this review with one of the most wonderful quotes from the book: 'The memory is a living thing - it too is in transit. But during the moment, all that is remembered joins and lives - the old and the young, the past and the present, the living and the dead.'
Of One Writer's Beginnings, William Maxwell writes, 'It is all wonderful... The parts of the book that are about her family... are by turns hilarious and affecting. They are a kind of present... from Miss Welty to her audience.' Penelope Lively believes it to be a piece of 'entrancing reading', and Paul Binding writes in the New Statesman: 'A writer for whom "genius" is for once a not inappropriate word... A book of great sensitivity - as controlled and yet aspiring as a lyric poem.'
In One Writer's Beginnings, which was first published in 1984, Welty decided to tell her story in one 'continuous thread of revelation'. The book provides, says its blurb, '... an exploration of memory by one of America's finest writers, whose many honours include the Pulitzer Prize, the American Book Award for Fiction, and the Gold Medal for the novel.' This book consists of three essays - 'Listening', 'Learning to See', and 'Finding a Voice' - which have been transcribed from a set of three lectures which Welty gave at Harvard University in April 1983.
When 'Listening' begins, Welty's words set the scene immediately: 'In our house on North Congress Street in Jackson, Mississippi, where I was born, the oldest of three children, in 1909, we grew up to the striking of clocks.' Throughout, Welty's voice is lyrical, candid, and often quite moving. She reveals her deep love of books, which was present even when she was a tiny child. 'I learned,' she writes, 'from the age of two or three that any room in our house, at any time of day, was there to read in, or be read to.' Welty's writing is particularly beautiful when she discusses her love of stories: 'It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming up of themselves like grass. Yet regardless of where they came from, I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them - with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself. Still illiterate, I was ready for them, committed to all the reading I could give them.'
In a series of vignettes, Welty talks about stargazing, singing, childhood illness, learning the alphabet, religion, schooling, and the quirks of her in some ways unconventional parents, amongst other things. The imagery which she conjures up is often lovely; for instance: 'All children in those small-town, unhurried days had a vast inner life going on in the movies. Whole families attended together in the evenings, at least once a week, and children were allowed to go without chaperone in the long summer afternoons - schoolmates with their best friends, pairs of little girls trotting on foot the short distance through the park to town under their Japanese parasols.' When she discusses the travels which she went on with her family each summer, she writes of their positive effect upon her later writing: 'I think now, in looking back on these summer trips - this one and a number later, made in the car and on the train - that another element in them must have been influencing my mind. The trips were wholes unto themselves. They were stories. Not only in form, but their taking on direction, movement, development, change. They changed something in my life: each trip made its particular revelation, though I could not have found words for it. But with the passage of time, I could look back on them and see them bringing me news, discoveries, premonitions, promises - I still can; they still do.'
One Writer's Beginnings spans Welty's childhood, and includes comparatively brief reflections about her time at college, and the early days of her writing career. She is insightful about the creation of her characters, and the knowledge which one must have as an author to create enough depth. 'Characters take on a life sometimes by luck,' writes Welty, 'but I suspect it is when you can write most entirely out of yourself, inside the skin, heart, mind, and soul of a person who is not yourself, that a character becomes in his own right another human being on the page.'
One Writer's Beginnings is a beautifully written celebration of stories, of Welty's own, and of those which filled her girlhood. I was pulled in immediately, transported to the Deep South in the early twentieth century. This is a joyous account, filled with depth and insight. Welty's voice is utterly charming, and sometimes quite profound. I shall close this review with one of the most wonderful quotes from the book: 'The memory is a living thing - it too is in transit. But during the moment, all that is remembered joins and lives - the old and the young, the past and the present, the living and the dead.'
July 19, 2025
By no means a manual for writers, readers will nevertheless come away from reading One Writer's Beginnings with a sense of how Welty's stories are crafted. The infamous and notoriously difficult question put to authors - “What was your inspiration?” is answered here with deft and grace: Life. Memory. An eye for the particular, the gesture that conveys feeling, the monologue that tells “much more besides,” the gossip and everyday lies that form the basis of scenes. A writer must be a discerning listener for (not “to”) stories. 4/5 because some of the biography of her parents dragged for me.
January 27, 2025
If you saw me crying over the word "confluence" no you didn't.
February 11, 2023
Endearing. Few build character (even though real) with the economy of language and yet deep complexity of Welty. The contextualisation of early XX century America is quite extraordinary.
July 13, 2025
i began re-reading this after Jesmyn Ward, of DeLisle, Mississippi, wowed me with “Sing, Unburied, Sing.” Like any great book, i returned to the first page right after i finished - first line: “I like to think I believe what death is.” Before that is a quote from Miss Welty and this book: “The memory is a living thing — it too is in transit. But during this moment, all that is remembered joins, and lives — the old and the young, the past and the present, the living and the dead.”
When I lived in Welty’s Jackson nearly four decades ago, I knew she bought groceries at the same Piggly Wiggly on Fortification St. (#14 in the chain, as i recall). One night Richard Ford showed me the street behind the state Capitol where he grew up — and where Welty had grown up decades earlier.
i passed the site where her father’s bank building stood, not far from my AP office, in the basement of the Capitol Towers building.
“One Writer’s Beginnings” is more than a memoir; it is a living document and inspiration. You can see the characters that inhabited her short stories and novels, understand the power or her pursuit of creativity and independence at a time and place where the tide of sexism and discrimination was doubly strong.
From words to images (see her Depression-era photographs for the WPA) she recounts her orphaned father’s love of a book he kept his entire life—and her first box camera. The worlds they opened!
When I lived in Welty’s Jackson nearly four decades ago, I knew she bought groceries at the same Piggly Wiggly on Fortification St. (#14 in the chain, as i recall). One night Richard Ford showed me the street behind the state Capitol where he grew up — and where Welty had grown up decades earlier.
i passed the site where her father’s bank building stood, not far from my AP office, in the basement of the Capitol Towers building.
“One Writer’s Beginnings” is more than a memoir; it is a living document and inspiration. You can see the characters that inhabited her short stories and novels, understand the power or her pursuit of creativity and independence at a time and place where the tide of sexism and discrimination was doubly strong.
From words to images (see her Depression-era photographs for the WPA) she recounts her orphaned father’s love of a book he kept his entire life—and her first box camera. The worlds they opened!
August 11, 2017
Eudora Welty begins this memoir - which had its origins in a series of lectures delivered at Harvard University in 1983 - with a snapshot of her parents. The scene is early morning, and young Eudora is buttoning her shoes in the hallway while her mother is frying bacon downstairs and her father is shaving upstairs. Together, they are trading musical phrases back and forth - one of them humming, and the other whistling. There is something about this scene - the harmony of the different but complimentary parts, the cosiness and warmth, the sense of fun - that really does set the scene for a deeply felt book. The memoir is dedicated to Welty's parents, and all of the best bits are inspired by their sayings and doings and their lives before Jackson, Mississippi. (Her father grew up on a farm in Ohio, while her mother was from the mountains of West Virginia.) Welty divides her memoir into three parts: Listening, Learning to See and Finding a Voice. I thought that the first two parts, which mostly dwell on childhood memories, were by far the strongest. Welty has a distinctive voice - in her writing, and no doubt in her speaking - and I found her reminiscences pure pleasure to read. I have a highly ambivalent feeling about the South, about places like Mississippi, but Welty illuminates the culture in a truly beautiful way.
September 26, 2020
More than twenty years ago I purchased a copy of this little book. A student and I had determined that since neither of us could afford to take a writing class in the summer and both of us wanted to write, we would teach ourselves how to write a novella. We ended the summer with novels and a new understanding of our own writing processes. My partner read this book, but I never had till now.
It is a dear thing, tender and subtle and ultimately wise and deep about the way we come to writing.
I could love this book if only for the following paragraph:
"The events in our lives happen in time, but in their significance to ourselves they find their own order, a timetable not necessarily—perhaps not possibly—chronological. The time as we know it subjectively is often the chronology that stories and novels follow: it is the continuous thread of revelation."
[see Bechdel's Fun Home, how she occasionally uses the same panels to tell a developing story as she grows to understand her parents.]
It is a dear thing, tender and subtle and ultimately wise and deep about the way we come to writing.
I could love this book if only for the following paragraph:
"The events in our lives happen in time, but in their significance to ourselves they find their own order, a timetable not necessarily—perhaps not possibly—chronological. The time as we know it subjectively is often the chronology that stories and novels follow: it is the continuous thread of revelation."
[see Bechdel's Fun Home, how she occasionally uses the same panels to tell a developing story as she grows to understand her parents.]
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