At the center of Eudora Welty's first published story, “Death of a Traveling Salesman”, Bowman, the bachelor businessman, suddenly understands both his years of loneliness and the relationship between the older man and the girl who have rescued him from his wrecked car. He sees there: “A marriage, a fruitful marriage. That simple thing. Anyone could have had that.” This crucial moment augurs the “fruitful” subject that permeates Welty's fiction: the intimate and often strange relationships within families. Welty is the twentieth-century master of her subject, and the century's most gifted and radical practitioner of the short story. She won most of the major literary prizes during her career, including the Pulitzer Prize and the French <

This article in full comprises 2144 words but only the first 150 or so words are available to non-members.

All our articles have been written recently by experts in their field, more than 95% of them university professors. To read about membership, please click here.

First published 18 July 2002

Citation: Johnston, Carol Ann. "Eudora Welty". The Literary Encyclopedia. 18 July 2002.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5148, accessed 20 November 2009.]