Series 29b: Select Correspondence, Eudora Welty Collection (Z/0301)

Series 29b: Select Correspondence.

Dates: 1921-2001; n.d.
Size: 31.00 cubic ft.

The “Select Correspondence” includes letters written by more than eight hundred individuals. Among these individuals are members of Eudora Welty’s family, Jackson friends, college friends, fellow writers and photographers, editors and publishers, scholars working with her fiction or arranging for her visits to their campuses, journalists, filmmakers, playwrights, theatrical producers, elected officials, and individuals who fall into two or more of these categories. These letters are likely to be of value to students of Welty’s life and work and to those studying the life and work of writers who were her friends.

The letters written by Mary Lou Aswell, Frank Lyell, Kenneth Millar, John Robinson, and Diarmuid Russell are of special interest because the Welty Collection also includes letters from Eudora Welty to these individuals. Mary Lou Aswell was a fiction editor at Harper’s Bazaar when she and Welty met. Their correspondence began in 1947 and continued until Aswell died in 1984. Frank Lyell was a lifelong Welty friend from Jackson, Mississippi. Lyell went on to teach English at North Carolina State University and at the University of Texas. Their correspondence spans the years 1930 to 1977, the year of Lyell’s death. Kenneth Millar, an established mystery writer, wrote under the pen name of Ross Macdonald and was a resident of Santa Barbara, California, when he first wrote Welty in 1970. Their correspondence continued until 1982, when Millar’s Alzheimer’s disease made it impossible. John F. Robinson was Welty’s friend from their high school days together; he and Welty were romantically involved from 1937-1952. At some point in the 1970s, Welty, in an effort to protect Robinson’s privacy, destroyed most of his letters to her, but those written after this date and twenty-three early letters have survived. Of particular note is Robinson’s letter describing the Battle of Sicily, in which he participated. Diarmuid Russell was Welty’s agent and close friend, from 1940 until his death in 1973, and his letters to Welty span this period.

Letters from Welty’s fellow writers comprise a veritable Who’s Who of American and English literature. Elizabeth Bishop, William Faulkner, Ford Madox Ford, Richard Ford, E. M. Forster, Caroline Gordon, Henry Green, Josephine Haxton (aka Ellen Douglas), Beth Henley, Barbara Howes, Alun Jones, Gwyn Jones, Mary Lavin, Mary Mian, Willie Morris, Toni Morrison, Howard Moss, Joyce Carol Oates, Walker Percy, S. J. Perelman, William Jay Smith, William Styron, Allen Tate, Peter Taylor, Anne Tyler, Alfred Uhry, Robert Penn Warren, Richard Wilbur, and Tennessee Williams are part of the series. A substantial number of letters from the writers Elizabeth Bowen, Katherine Anne Porter, and Reynolds Price, all close friends of Welty, are by virtue of their number and the span of years they cover an especially important part of the series.

The letters from Elizabeth Bowen begin in 1950 and end in 1970. They focus primarily upon Welty’s visits with Bowen in London and Ireland and Bowen’s with Welty in Jackson, Mississippi, and New York City. Bowen also discusses the writers Carson McCullers and T. S. Eliot. Welty’s letters to Bowen are held by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas in Austin.

The letters from Katherine Anne Porter begin in 1938 and end in 1977. Welty herself organized the letters as she worked upon an essay about Porter (“My Introduction to Katherine Anne Porter.” Georgia Review XLIV.1-2: 13-27.) These letters include descriptions of Porter’s early efforts to help Welty’s career, the time they shared at Yaddo, her distaste for Carson McCullers, her feelings about World War II, her inability to finish a novel, her divorce from Albert Erskine, and the pleasure she takes in her annual Twelfth Night parties. Welty’s letters to Porter are held by the University of Maryland Libraries.

The letters from Reynolds Price span the years 1955 to 1996 and show their friendship, which began when Price was a student at Duke University, evolving through the years. In the letters Price thanks Welty for her assistance, discusses writers he admires, asks Welty’s advice about stories, eventually offers his advice to her about manuscripts she has sent him, provides moral support to her during times of crisis, and discusses his own battle with cancer. Welty’s letters to Price are held by Duke University.

The letters from Welty’s parents to her and the letters they exchanged between themselves are sealed until 2021, but there are family letters from Andrews, Upshurs, and Weltys in the Select Correspondence just as there are letters from many of Welty’s close friends: Jackson, Mississippi, friends include Willia Wright Bennett, Patti Black, Thomasina Blissard, Nash Burger, Charlotte Capers, Hubert Creekmore, Lehman Engel, Bill Hamilton, Ralph Hilton, Willanna Mallett, Jane Petty, Leone Shotwell Ricketts, Emily White Ring, Dorothy Simmons, Willie Spann, Tom Spengler, Phineas and Pat Stevens, Jack Wiseman, and Jimmie Wooldridge. Friends from her undergraduate and graduate studies at the Mississippi State College for Women, the University of Wisconsin, and Columbia University and friends she made on travels in this country and abroad are also represented in this series.

Welty’s literary career led her to correspond with many notable figures in the world of publishing; publishers Alfred Knopf and William Jovanovich, editors John Woodburn, Lambert Davis, Robert Giroux, Albert Erskine, and John Ferrone, and agents Henry Volkening and Timothy Seldes are among them.

The Robber Bridegroom and The Ponder Heart, two Welty novellas, drew forth the interest of theatrical producers, playwrights and actors, and a substantial amount of correspondence concerns the dramatization of these two works. Letters from Eddie Dowling, William Archibald, Baldwin Bergersen, Jerome Chodorov, William Fields, John Houseman, Danny Kaye, Kevin Kline, Sarah Marshall, Una Merkel, David Wayne fall into this category.

The interest of scholars in Welty’s work is quite evident from the letters in this series. Letters from Louis Rubin, who invited Welty to Hollins College in the 1950s; Daniel Aaron, who hosted Welty at Smith College in the sixties and in the 1980s invited her to deliver the William E. Massey, Sr., Lectures in the History of American Civilization at Harvard University (lectures revised and published as One Writer’s Beginnings); Robert Daniel, who along with Welty and Frank Lyell wrote a never published book of parodies called Lillies that Fester; Laurence Stapleton, who taught at Bryn Mawr where Welty was a Lucy Donnelly Fellow; and many other academics are now available for research.

The scholarly regard for Welty’s work is reflected in the number of film that work has commanded and in the interest of documentary filmmakers in her life. The correspondence from Patchy Wheatley, Calvin Skaggs, Richard Moore, Bruce Schwartz, and Alan Bergman typifies that interest.

Having worked briefly as a journalist herself, Welty felt an affinity for many who practiced this profession as they did for her. Letters from Roger Mudd, Jim Lehrer, and Robert MacNeil bear testimony to this connection.

Of course, there are many surprises to be found in the Select Correspondence. The interest that English aesthete Stephen Tennant took in Welty’s work and the elaborately illustrated letters he sent her are perhaps one such surprise. Others lie in store and will richly reward those who read the Select Correspondence.

— Suzanne Marrs

Note on the arrangement:

The Select Correspondence is arranged alphabetically by writer, and thereunder, chronologically. While the correspondence may include enclosures, such as letters of mutual acquaintances that were forwarded to Welty, only the names of the principal correspondents appear in this finding aid or on the folders. These names appear usually in the forms used by the writers in their correspondence with Welty. Where known, variant or fuller name forms, such as married names or pen names, will appear in parentheses.

If an individual wrote to Welty primarily on behalf of an organization, institution, or another person, the correspondence is filed under the name of that organization, institution, or person, with the actual writer’s name following in parentheses on the folder. If a folder contains items written or signed by the spouse or other family members of a principal correspondent, either that family member’s name or the phrase “and family” will appear on the folder.

While the correspondence of an individual is primarily arranged by date, occasional fragile items have been encapsulated, and placed in separate folders for better preservation. The folders of these items, therefore, may duplicate, or overlap with, the chronological order of the regular correspondence. Where files were arranged by Eudora Welty herself, they have been preserved as separate folders, and filed in the best date order possible.

If an item accompanying a piece of correspondence could better serve researchers in another series, that material has been placed within the appropriate series and cross-references have been made on the folder of the principal piece of correspondence. So, for example, most manuscripts originally enclosed with letters to Welty have been moved to other series, as the folders containing those letters will indicate.

Box List:

(Dates given on the list are those of the principal items of correspondence.)

Appendix: Index of Principal Correspondents

The index follows the conventions described in the “Note on Arrangement” above. In the column “Name of Sender(s) or Folder Title,” one will find typically the names of the principal correspondents, whether persons or institutions, with variant name forms appearing in parentheses. Names of spouses, or the term “and family” will also appear in this column when letters are present in the boxes for those individuals. In some cases, a folder title will appear instead of a name in this column: this occurs primarily for folders of letters that were either grouped together by Eudora Welty, or that were miscellaneous in nature. In the case of letters that were primarily written on behalf of an organization or another person, the name of that person or organization will appear under “Name of Sender,” while the name of the actual writer(s) will appear in the second column as that of an “Associated Sender.” Some boxes contain only oversized or fragile materials or envelopes: the index will note these instances in parentheses following the appropriate box number.

Finally, it should be noted that this index will guide the researcher to the box containing the letters of each principal correspondent, but may not necessarily indicate the exact order of the folders within each box. The index reflects the alphabetical order of the names as established by a computer, while the actual filing of the correspondence in the boxes was done by a team of archivists who have followed slightly different filing conventions. For example, the archivists have typically placed the correspondence of organizations after letters of individuals bearing similar names: “The Katherine Anne Porter Foundation” materials, for instance, are filed in box 180 after the letters of Katherine Anne Porter herself.

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