Users’ Guide: A Word from the Editor

Evidence suggests that when Eudora Welty was editor of the Lamar Life Radio News in the 1930s, she wrote more than her column “The Editor’s Mike,” filling the pages with features and special interest stories to keep the programming alive and listeners tuned in (See Welty, Early 119–25). A decade later, Welty was contributing to the war effort from home, editing the Mississippi Women’s War Bond News Letter, Club Issue,¹ reminding people to buy bonds to support the war effort. My purpose here is not to retell the critical arguments of the essays published this spring, nor to solicit aid for the ailing economy and various government projects, but to suggest how the Eudora Welty Review can be as useful as possible to encourage research and scholarship on Welty and wider reading and teaching of her work.

We begin with essays that bring a variety of perspectives regarding the context, content, and style of Welty’s writing and photography by new and accomplished Welty scholars from France, Portugal, and the US. Peggy Prenshaw, 2010 recipient of the Society for the Study of Southern Literature’s Richard Beale Davis Award for Lifetime Achievement in Southern Studies, developed her essay for Welty Centennial occasions at Emory University in Atlanta, the Conference on the Book in Oxford, Mississippi, and the Welty Society international conference in Jackson, Mississippi. Pitavy-Souques’s essay, replete with provocative ideas, sends us simultaneously back to Welty’s works and to books, museums, and the internet to “see” the confluences of twentieth-century artists’ imaginations and responses to world events. Géraldine Chouard concludes her essays begun in 2007 in the Eudora Welty Newsletter of Welty through an alphabetical lens with descriptions of Weltianna from Q to Z. Throughout the essays are critical commentaries on Perseus and Medusa, “A Curtain of Green,” “Moon Lake,” and “Why I Live at the P. O.,” in particular, suggesting that to read the essays together is more evocative than reading them separately.

We are pleased to contribute to the scholarly discussion of Welty’s work with reviews of special issues of academic journals and books about or connected with Welty studies. The translated review of Welty’s Collected Stories offers an understanding of the Spanish reading and reception of Welty with references to Truman Capote, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Alice Munro, and Salman Rushdie. Future reviews might also include exhibitions, film, and music adaptations concentrating on or relevant to Welty or her work.

A new (and continuing) feature of the Eudora Welty Review is titled Practical Matters. Here we collect reports from a variety of constituents of Welty studies: the Eudora Welty Foundation, the Eudora Welty House and Garden, the Eudora Welty Society, and the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. Forrest Galey, the Special Projects Officer who leads the team of archivists for the Eudora Welty Collection, has provided EWR with three guides that are printed in Practical Matters: a guide to the Collection’s Series and Series revisions, instructions for accessing and searching the Collection with MDAH’s Online Catalog, and Contacts for Use Permissions and Reprographic Services. We applaud the decision to put newly incorporated materials in the Welty Collection in bold typeface in the online catalogue. Don’t miss these invaluable aids for researching and using the Welty Collection. We will also make them available on the EWR website. Besides these regular communications, future Practical Matters may include updates on special collections of Welty materials, foreign language editions, rare book news, and other tools for Welty scholars, researchers, and readers.

Cathy Chengges created a summative Eudora Welty Checklist of primary and secondary works from 1986–2008 for the Mississippi Quarterly Eudora Welty Centennial Supplement, April 2009. Chengges continues to organize the annual checklist of Welty Scholarship that will from 2010 forward record publications for the entire previous year. Reviews (of books, adaptations, and exhibitions), theses, and dissertations are listed in sections 5, 6, and 7. Please note the important correction to the1986–2008 Checklist at the end of the 2009 Checklist. Soon, the collective MQ and annual EWR checklists will be available in...