Eudora Welty Digital Archives Manuscripts

This series consists of typescript drafts ca. 1941 of "Why I Live at the P.O." (originally titled "Why I Live in the P.O.") with Eudora Welty's handwritten revisions and "A Worn Path" with editorial corrections, handwritten revisions by Eudora Welty, and an occasional editorial query and authorial response. The works appeared with a variety of diverse and engaging short stories collected in Welty's book A Curtain of Green (1941), and are frequently republished in textbooks. A Welty reading of "Why I Live at the P.O." was produced as an audio cassette in 1992. "A Worn Path" was adapted and produced for the screen in 1994.

This series comprises typescript and carbon typescript drafts of "Where Is the Voice Coming From?" with numerous revisions handwritten by Eudora Welty, some of them changing names of actual people and places to fictitious ones; discarded titles; and Welty's handwritten comments in margins. "Where Is the Voice Coming From?" is an eerily accurate fictional account of the murder of a Civil Rights leader, inspired by the assassination of Medgar Evers on June 12, 1963. The short story was published in the July 6, 1963, issue of The New Yorker.

This series includes early drafts and working papers for Eudora Welty's novel, The Optimist's Daughter, as it first appeared in The New Yorker in 1969. Entitled "Baltimore," "An Only Child," and "Poor Eyes" in its early versions, these typescript, carbon typescript, and ribbon pages display Welty's handwritten revisions and notes. The series also includes the complete draft of the Random House novel published in 1972, which expands upon The New Yorker version and features editorial corrections; Welty's handwritten revisions throughout, primarily of words or phrases; substantial deletions; and many paste-overs, often using photocopied sheets. The Optimist's Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1973.

"Is Phoenix Jackson's Grandson Really Dead?" was Eudora Welty's written response to the question most often posed by readers of "A Worn Path." This series includes typescript, carbon typescript, and photocopied pages with Welty's handwritten revisions. The essay's initial publication was in Critical Inquiry I (1974); later it appeared in Welty's collection of essays and reviews, The Eye of the Story.

In 1983, Eudora Welty delivered a series of speeches, the William E. Massey Sr. Lectures in the History of American Civilization at Harvard University, and in 1984, Harvard University Press published those lectures under the title One Writer's Beginnings. The memoir is Welty's most autobiographical work, conveys the spirit of an era, and suggests much about the origins of creativity. This series comprises Welty's handwritten notes; typescript and photocopy pages with Welty's handwritten revisions and corrections, typically involving a word or phrase; a few large deletions; and many additions or revisions pinned or pasted on the pages. There are multiple subseries; one consists of "pages omitted from A Writer's Beginnings notes and tryouts" and another features pages of Welty's handwritten notes in a spiral notebook.