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  • A Daring Life: A Biography of Eudora Welty by Carolyn J. Brown
  • Elizabeth Crews
A Daring Life: A Biography of Eudora Welty. By Carolyn J. Brown. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2012. x, 124 pp. $20.

Carolyn J. Brown’s biography of Eudora Welty is surprisingly short (84 pages of text, plus an afterword, five appendices, notes, bibliography, credits, and an index) for covering someone who lived such a long and full life. The length, however, is fitting since Brown’s biography is not for scholars or adults but for young readers who may be encountering Welty and her fiction for the first time, although this intended audience is noted only on the back cover and nowhere else in the marketing of the book. Welty’s and others’ photographs of her family, friends, and herself are featured throughout the biography. Each of the eight chapters begins with a quotation, all but one drawn from Welty’s writing. Brown relies heavily on Welty’s published nonfiction and on manuscripts and correspondence in the Eudora Welty Collection at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, and thus Welty’s voice contributes to the telling of her life story. Through all of this, Brown presents a well-written and informative biography of an author with whom twenty-first-century young adults can relate.

Brown opens her biography by providing her readers with an understanding of the time and place in which Welty lived and wrote. The first chapter, “Life in Jackson: Eudora’s Early Years,” presents Welty’s parents and childhood through stories told by Welty in a variety of sources. In the second chapter, “Eudora’s Education,” Brown continues to rely on quotations from Welty, but in addition she provides an array of Welty’s poetry and drawings as examples of Welty’s creativity and varying interests. These first two chapters, which focus on Welty as a child and young adult, may especially appeal to young adult readers as they can relate to the author before she found her vocation. Young adult readers will understand the range of emotions Welty felt throughout the early years of her life, from childhood excitement about snow to feelings of not fitting in while at college in Wisconsin. Brown also offers carefree stories of young Welty going to baseball games and jokingly requesting Hershey candy bars from the president of the company. Instead of glossing over Welty’s young adult [End Page 171] years, Brown gives insight into the author’s life in the same age as the intended reader. Young Eudora Welty engages readers despite the fact that almost a century has passed since her youth.

Chapters three through six (“The 1930s: Finding Her Eye and Her Voice,” “Before the War: Friends, Fellowship, and Early Success,” “World War II: A Promising Career Interrupted,” and “The 1960s: Personal and Political Unrest”) walk the reader through four decades of Welty’s life, covering the majority of her professional life. These chapters emphasize Welty’s photography, fiction, speaking engagements, and teaching. Brown contextualizes these important details with stories of Mississippi life during the depression, Welty’s life before and during World War II, and life during the Civil Rights Movement. Woven into the stories of her professional life are stories of personal loss, relationships with friends and family, travels, and political strife.

While chapter six describes the declining health and deaths of Welty’s immediate family members, chapters seven and eight, titled “Grief and Recovery: The Optimist’s Daughter and One Writer’s Beginnings” and “The Importance of Friendship: Eudora’s Final Days,” respectively, point to the many positive occurrences in Welty’s life after such personal loss. Brown speaks of “the extremely autobiographical story,” The Optimist’s Daughter, “considered by many to be Welty’s masterpiece,” but in the final two chapters, she continues to draw attention to the importance of Welty’s many friends in her life. These chapters also highlight several honors bestowed on Welty at this time, including Eudora Welty Day in Mississippi—an event attended by many of Welty’s friends from all over the United States. Brown argues that friendships, not fiction writing, were of the most importance during Welty’s...

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