Collecting the Stories of Eudora Welty

Bringing together Eudora Welty’s stories in a single volume might seem the easiest of publishing enterprises, yet there were two critical problems to resolve before we could begin, and nearly four years would elapse between the birth of the idea and publication of the book. The first problem was recognized at the outset. The second came as a surprise.

The project was inspired in part by the success of Jean Stafford’s collected stories several years earlier, which I remembered had won a Pulitzer Prize. More significantly it had served as a retrospective of the author’s work. If everything went right, I thought, Eudora Welty could have the same good fortune.

Eudora Welty and John Ferrone at Ferrone’s farm in Pennsylvania, June 1988.

I was then on the editorial staff of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich as manager of the Harvest paperback list. Harcourt was Eudora’s principal publisher, and all four of her short story volumes were under the Harvest imprint. So I already felt somewhat possessive about her and, needless to say, was a confirmed admirer. The idea germinated for more than a year before I was authorized to discuss it with Eudora’s agent, Tim Seldes, over lunch in May 1978. He at once understood its importance for Eudora’s reputation and became my most helpful ally in getting it launched. After our meeting he wrote and said he would be glad to take a proposal to Eudora, although he could not predict what the results would be.

There was good reason for his doubt. Harcourt was no longer Eudora’s publisher. In the late 1960s, Diarmuid Russell, her previous agent, had had a bitter falling out with William Jovanovich, Harcourt’s Chairman, and on Russell’s recommendation Eudora had moved to Random House who would publish her next two novels and a volume of essays. Her loyalty to Russell is not remarkable in light of what she wrote about him in her preface to The Collected Stories: “Diarmuid Russell’s integrity was a clear stream proceeding undeflected and without a ripple on its own way through the fields of publishing. On his quick perception, his acute and steady judgment in regard to my work, as well as on his friendship, I relied without reservation” (x). Under the circumstances would Eudora welcome a return to her old publisher?

Tim was prepared to highlight the benefits for her and say encouraging things about her editor-to-be. He felt sufficiently optimistic to ask me to get a formal offer started. I wrote and said I would do so with enormous pleasure. Did I understand him to say no stories had been published since the early fifties? Naturally the book would be stronger if some uncollected or unpublished stories could be included.

Many months went by, unaccountably, during which John Cheever’s collected stories were published, to great acclaim, which only deepened my feeling that Eudora’s moment had come. I was finally able to present Harcourt’s offer to Tim in January 1979, along with a bit of preaching to the converted: “It is time for The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty, time for a retrospective of her work, time for celebrating her. I passionately hope that Eudora is agreeable.” Of course, she was. Neither Tim nor I should have worried about that for a single minute.

Then we came to a genuine obstacle. It turned out there were indeed uncollected stories, two of them, first published in The New Yorker, that had to be included to make the volume complete. But Eudora was under contract to Random House for her next work of fiction, and they refused to let us have the rights to those stories, even on a nonexclusive basis. Tim protested to Eudora’s editor at Random House, Albert Erskine, that she was being deprived of potential income as well as of the recognition she had more than earned. In early August, he reported Random House still hadn’t budged. The entire year went by. I have no record of the...