One Writer’s Beginnings (Masterplots II: Juvenile and Young Adult Biography Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Eudora Welty
- First Published: 1984
- Time of Work: 1909–1980
- Setting: Mississippi, Ohio, and West Virginia
- Principal Characters: Eudora Welty, Mary Chestina Andrews Welty, Christian Webb Welty
- Genres: Nonfiction, Autobiography, Memoir
- Subjects: Maturation or coming of age, Language or languages, Family or family life, United States or Americans, Memory, Adolescence, South or Southerners, Authors or writers, Literature, Writing, 1910’s, 1920’s, Creative process, Small-town life, Youth, Nostalgia
- Locales: Ohio, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Jackson, MS
Form and Content
In One Writer’s Beginnings, Eudora Welty explains in vivid and moving detail, by means of a series of memories, how she became a writer of fiction. Memory is her central theme; she writes that her memory is her greatest treasure, the place where all the events and persons of her life come together and live together outside time, as if they were the characters in her stories. The book is structured in three main parts: “Listening,” “Learning to See,” and “Finding a Voice.”
In the first and longest section, “Listening,” Welty...
[The entire page is 2042 words long]

