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by Eudora Welty (Author)
This is the first collection of Welty's stories, originally published in 1941. It includes such classics as "A Worn Path," "Petrified Man," "Why I Live at the P.O.," and "Death of a Traveling Salesman." The historic Introduction by Katherine Anne Porter brought Welty to the attention of the american reading public.
Back Jacket
In her now-famous introduction to this first collection by a then-unknown young writer from Mississippi named Eudora Welty, Katherine Anne Porter wrote that "there is even in the smallest story a sense of power in reserve which makes me believe firmly that, splendid beginning that it is, it is only the beginning." Porter was of course prophetic, and the beginning was splendid. A Curtain of Green both introduced and established Eudora Welty as an instinctive genius of short fiction, and in this groundbreaking collection, which includes "Powerhouse" and "Keela, the Outcaste Indian Maiden," among other stories, are the first great works of a great American writer.
"To explain just why these stories impress one so appears as difficult as to define why an ordinary face, encountered by chance in the street, might suddenly reveal miraculous beauty, through a smile perhaps, or through an unexpected expression of sadness."--Original review of A Curtain of Green, November 16, 1941, by Marianne Hauser in the New York Times
"Miss Welty's short stories are deceptively simple. They are concerned with ordinary people, but what happens to them and the manner of the telling are far from ordinary . . . A fine writer and a distinguished book."-The New Yorker
Eudora Welty (1909-2001) was born in Jackson, Mississippi. She worked as a photographer during the Depression and published her first book, a collection of short stories, in 1941. In addition to short fiction, Welty wrote novels, novellas, essays, and reviews, and was the winner of both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. By the time of her death in 2001, Welty had established herself as one of the most important and beloved American writers of the twentieth century.
