Book Review

Eudora: A Writer's Life (1998)

EW's GRADE
C+

Details Writer: Ann Waldron; Genres: Biography, Nonfiction; Publisher: Doubleday

The all-too-fitting epigraph to Eudora: A Writer's Life, the first biography of Eudora Welty quotes the subject herself: '''Your private life should be kept private.... They'd have a hard time trying to find something about me.''' Indeed they have. While the revered 90-year-old writer and beloved Jackson, Mississippi, resident is famously uncooperative with biographers, Southern journalist Ann Waldron didn't foresee that Welty's coterie would unanimously maintain their friend's code of silence. So this earnest writer was left to cull from previously published material, with only wispy speculations on Welty's seemingly placid relationships, such as her rumored affair with Elizabeth Bowen. Sadly, with Welty and her friends likely taking such stories to their graves, we may never get a complete account of this writer's real life. C+

Originally posted Dec 04, 1998 Published in issue #461 Dec 04, 1998 Order article reprints

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