Series 19: Speeches, Eudora Welty Collection (Z/0301)
Series 19: Speeches.
Dates: 1962-1991; n.d.
Size: 0.35 cubic ft.
Note on Arrangement and Description:
The notes, drafts, and speeches that compose this series have been arranged in chronological order. Material added to the collection from the gift of the Estate of Eudora Welty is indicated in bold font. The notes and drafts have been arranged in the order they were found at time of processing and all pieces have been assigned a number by the archivist, as indicated in brackets below.
Note from Suzanne Marrs’ The Welty Collection: A Guide to the Eudora Welty Manuscripts and Documents at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History (Jackson and London: University Press of Mississippi, 1988:
Typescripts of six of Eudora Welty’s speeches are listed elsewhere: 1) an untitled speech that would be published as a Fairy Tale of the Natchez Trace; 2) an untitled speech that would be published as "Jane Austen", 3) "An Interior Affair," a speech that would be published as "Must the Novelist Crusade?"; 4) three lectures that would be published under the title One Writer’s Beginnings.”
| Description of Speech | Box Number | Folder Number |
| "PRESENTATION TO WILLIAM FAULKNER OF THE GOLD MEDAL FOR FICTION." 1962. 2 pieces. Typescript (photocopy); pages [1]-2; presentation remarks, May 24, 1962, at the Ceremonial of the American Academy and the National Institute of Arts and Letters; published in Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the National Institute of Arts and Letters. Second Series. Number B. New York, 1963. 225-26. | 79 | 1 |
| Untitled. 1965. 17 pieces. Typescript; pages 1-15, plus pages 5A and 7A; speech about William Faulkner delivered at the Southern Literary Festival, April 23, 1965, Oxford, Miss.; handwritten and typed revisions; paste-overs and pin-ons. [pp. 1-17] | 79 | 2 |
| Untitled. [1972]. 1 piece. Photocopy of Welty’s reply to Katherine Anne Porter’s presentation to Welty of the American Academy and National Institute of Arts and Letters Gold Medal of Fiction on May 17, 1972. This photocopy bears a handwritten note by Welty, and was originally sent by Welty to Mary Louise Aswell. | 79 | 3 |
| Untitled. 1974. 8 pieces. Carbon typescript; pages [1]-8; a speech about Nash Burger delivered March 28, 1974, for Welty by someone at the New York Times as part of a retirement party for Burger; a few handwritten revisions. (Burger, a life-long friend of Welty, graduated from high school in Jackson, Miss., taught high school English there after he finished his college education, and went on to become an editor at the New York Times Book Review.) | 79 | 4 |
| Untitled speech on Nash Burger. [1974]. 8 pieces. This photocopy of the carbon typescript speech with handwritten changes as described above bears additional corrections by Welty in pen and pencil. [pp. 1-8] Delivered as a tribute at Burger’s retirement party at John Leonard’s home on March 28, 1974, the speech was eventually published as the “Afterword” in Nash Burger’s autobiography The Road to West 43rd Street (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1995, pp. 178-184) under the title of “Nash K. Burger Jr. of Jackson, Miss.” | 79 | 5 |
| Untitled. 1980. 6 pieces. Typescript; pages 1-6; speech delivered at the inauguration symposium of Mississippi Governor William Winter, January 21, 1980; a few handwritten revisions; published in The Inaugural Papers of Governor William F. Winter. Ed. Charlotte Capers. Jackson: Mississippi Department of Archives and History, 1980. 21-24. | 79 | 6 |
| Untitled notes. [1980s]. 2 pieces. Handwritten notes in ink and pencil on note tablet paper discuss the relationship of the characters Aylmer and Georgiana in “The Birthmark” by Nathanial Hawthorne. [pp. 1-2] The notes may have been created for Welty’s reading of “The Birthmark” at the Morgan Library in New York in 1982, in celebration of the Library of America series featuring Hawthorne’s work, or for her reading of “The Birthmark” at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York in October of 1986. | 79 | 7 |
| Speech and notes on Hawthorne. [1983]. 14 pieces. A folder [fol. 8] marked “Hawthorne,” “remarks on behalf of The Library of America Washington D. C. 1984,” accompanies a typescript speech with ink corrections that Welty identifies as her response to the topic “A Southerner Looks at Hawthorne” [p. 9]. According to Suzanne Marrs’ Eudora Welty: A Biography (Orlando: Harcourt, 2005), p. 482, this speech was given by Welty in Washington, D. C. at the Library of America celebration in May of 1983 rather than 1984. The typescript includes a two-piece extract of a published version of The Scarlet Letter. Following the speech is an envelope marked “Notes for remarks on Hawthorne” and three pieces of handwritten notes by Welty: one contains a quotation by Hawthorne used in the typescript speech preceding it [p. 10]; the next lists or discusses some of Hawthorne’s works [p. 11], and the final page [p. 12], beginning “Read to,” contains ideas developed further by Welty in the first part of One Writer’s Beginnings. [Folder, envelope, pp. 1-12] | 79 | 8-10 |
| Remarks at Inauguration of the Faulkner Stamp University of Mississippi Oxford.” August 3, 1987. 10 pieces. Two pieces of carbon typescript with numerous handwritten changes are followed by two handwritten partial pages written on the verso of correspondence and signed by Welty, and the issue of Erato, The Harvard Book Review, in which this version of her remarks was published. [pp. 1-10] A November 2, 1987, letter of Michael Milburn [see Series 29b, Box 176] originally accompanied this material. | 79 | 11 |
| “Remarks at Inauguration of the Faulkner Stamp University of Mississippi Oxford.” August 3, 1987. 7 pieces. A carbon typescript with handwritten corrections of Welty’s speech at the inauguration of the stamp honoring William Faulkner is accompanied by a photocopy of that speech. The photocopy is not of this carbon, but appears to have been made from a typescript of the version that appeared in Erato, described above. The carbon typescript appears an earlier version of her remarks, and has two partial pages numbered “3” by Welty. [pp. 1-7] | 79 | 12 |
| “Remarks at the Whiting Writers Awards Ceremony.” October 29, 1987. 5 pieces. This is a photocopy of remarks identified in a note below the title as made at “The Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation at the Morgan Library” [New York]. The original manuscript was handwritten, with some typed passages. The subject of this speech is pleasure in literature. [pp. 1-5] | 79 | 13 |
| Notes for the Prologue at the Inauguration of Governor Ray Mabus. [ca. January 1988]. 1 piece. Notes for a section on education in Welty’s prologue to the January 12, 1988, inauguration of Mississippi governor Ray Mabus are written in ink on one side of notepaper with unrelated lists and notes on the verso. | 79 | 14 |
| “Welcoming Remarks on the occasion of Charles Kuralt’s Speaking at the E. Welty Library, Jackson.” [February 19, 1988]. 8 pieces. This typescript of Welty’s introduction of Charles Kuralt at a fundraiser held by the Friends of the Eudora Welty Library bears several corrections in ink. On the last page [p. 8] is a note to Charles Kuralt signed by Welty thanking him for the “wonderful evening.” [pp. 1-8] | 79 | 15 |
| Notes for a Memorial for Robert Penn Warren. 1990. 26 pieces. Welty spoke at the memorial for Robert Penn Warren held at the Century Club in New York on March 8, 1990. (Marrs, Eudora Welty…, p. 538; see also the March 19, 1990, letter of Dan Lacy; and March 26, 1990, letter of Dick Lewis in Series 29c, the General Correspondence). Twenty-five pieces of notes were contained in an envelope and identified by Welty [p. 1] as “Robert Penn Warren for memorial program Edit and work this up for Eleanor,” suggesting that Welty sent Robert Penn Warren’s wife, Eleanor, a copy of these remarks. The notes are a mixture of handwritten paragraphs and typescript ones, with numerous cross-outs and corrections. The first fifteen pieces appear in no continuous order, and are written on partial pages or strips of a variety of paper including notepad paper, a bank deposit slip, and a page of a book. The next ten pieces [pp. 16-25] are numbered by Welty, but include variant versions of similar passages, and are written on partial pages, or strips taped together. While fragmentary in nature, specific recollections and themes are discernible in Welty’s reminiscences of Robert Penn Warren, such as the nature and importance of storytelling. [Envelope, pp. 1-25] | 80 | 1 |
| Notes for PEN / Faulkner Gala on “A Sense of Place.” 1990; n.d. 19 pieces. On October 1, 1990, Welty spoke at the gala hosted by the PEN / Faulkner Award for Fiction at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. Welty’s notes on the topic of the gala, “A Sense of Place,” are handwritten in ink. The first six of the thirteen pieces of notepad paper were numbered by Welty. Corrections and crossed-out sections appear throughout, and there are variant versions of passages: Suzanne Marrs points out that Welty prepared her remarks for this occasion in less than three-and-a-half hours, concluding five minutes before the gala began (Marrs, Eudora Welty…, p. 541). Accompanying Welty’s notes are a program for the gala [pp. 14-16]; an August 15, 1990, letter from Janice F. Delaney, the executive director of the PEN / Faulkner Award outlining the schedule of the gala activities [pp. 17-18]; and an undated newsclipping [p. 19] reporting on the gala. [pp. 1-19] | 80 | 2 |
Walker Percy memorial tribute material. 1990. 29 pieces. For the published version see: Memorial Tributes to Walker Percy, 1916-1990. (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1991), pp. 13-17, reprinted in Eudora Welty, Occasions: Selected Writings. Edited by Pearl Amelia McHaney (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2009) pp. 208-211. | 80 | 3-4 |
| Notes and drafts for Walker Percy tribute at the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. 1991; n.d. 39 pieces. Grouped together are notes and drafts relating to the tribute to Walker Percy that Welty read at the November 5, 1991, meeting of the Academy. There are three pieces of handwritten and typescript notes bearing handwritten corrections [fol. 5, pp. 1-3]. There follow nine copies of computerized and typescript drafts of Welty’s tribute: There are four clean copies [fol. 5, pp. 8-23] of the same version of the typescript; another [fol. 6, pp. 32-35], bears one pencil correction and a stray mark. Yet another copy of this typescript [fol. 6, pp. 24-27], was marked by Welty “Read at Institute of Arts and Letters, Annual meeting for reading of Tributes” “New York, November 5, 1991,” and has one correction in pencil. The first [fol. 5, pp. 4-7] and last [fol. 6, pp. 36-39] carbon typescripts in the group are also copies of this version, but bear ink corrections in Welty’s hand. One carbon typescript [fol. 6, pp. 28-31], appears an earlier version of the tribute, bears the heading “Walker Percy,” has handwritten page numbers, and is signed “Eudora Welty.” This version contains numerous corrections in pen, and attachments with tape. See also the January 6, 1992, letter of Virginia Dajani, executive director of the Academy, (Series 29b, Select Correspondence) asking Welty for a copy of her tribute for publication in the Academy’s Proceedings. | 80 | 5-6 |