Eudora Welty's subjects are the people who live in southern towns like Jackson, Mississippi, which has been her home for all of her long life. 'I've stayed in one place, ' she says, and 'it's become the source of the information that stirs my imagination'. Her distinctive voice and wry observations are rooted in the southern conversational tradition. The stories in this volume, from the first two collections she published, range in tone from the quietly...

Legendary figures of Mississippi's colorful past--keel-boatman Mike Fink and the dread Harp brothers--along with characters from Eudora Welty's own delightful imagination people this rollicking fantasy set along the Natchez Trace. Berry-stained bandit Jamie Lockhart steals pioneer wilderness planter Clement Musgrove's beautiful daughter, Rosamond, away from a home dominated by his ugly, evil second wife, Salome. These and other characters are gathered...

Laurel Hand, long absent from the South, comes from Chicago to New Orleans, where her father dies after surgery. With Fay, the stupid new young wife of her father, Laurel returns to her former Mississippi home and stays a few days after the funeral for reunions with old friends. In a night alone in the house she grew up in, she confronts elements of the past and comes to a better understanding of it and of herself and her parents.

Collects short stories by a scrutinizer of Southern life, Eudora Welty, exposing the grotesque and violent nature of the human animal.

An account of the American writer's life and achievements traces her origins in Jackson, Mississippi, her relationships with such contemporaries as Katherine Anne Porter and E.M. Forster, and her receipt of numerous literary awards.