Eudora Welty Digital Archives

The Eudora Welty Digital Archives features selections of correspondence, manuscripts, photographs, and other media related to Eudora Welty (1909-2001), master of the short story and acknowledged as one of America's greatest authors. Most are from the Eudora Welty Collection (1882-2001), the premier source for Welty materials in the world, totaling more than 230 cubic feet and encompassing her entire life.

Digitization was funded by an implementation grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities; with curatorial, administrative, and technical support from MDAH; and a matching contribution for conservation supplies and services from the Eudora Welty Foundation. The Eudora Welty Digital Archives represents only a sample of Welty-related material housed at MDAH. Non-digitized items may be accessed in the William F. Winter Archives and History Building. Additional information is located in the catalog record finding aids for the collections.


Collection Description General & Tech Data

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4 Series

Eudora Welty Digital Archives Correspondence

The correspondence by Welty in the Eudora Welty Collection spans over seventy years and includes approximately 5,000 letters written to more than sixty correspondents. Scans of many of these pieces and Welty-related collections - the John Fraiser Robinson Papers, the Welty-Millar Letters, and a Eudora Welty Letter to Margaret Millar - are available online in the Digital Archives. Most of the correspondence from others to Welty was not digitized due to copyright and privacy concerns. Digitized items that may be protected by copyright and privacy laws and original materials that were not scanned can be viewed in the William F. Winter Archives and History Building.


5 Series

Eudora Welty Digital Archives Manuscripts

These series of Eudora Welty's manuscripts consist of typescript drafts, copy pages with editorial corrections, occasional editorial queries with authorial responses, and Welty's handwritten revisions. Images of the short stories "Why I Live at the P.O.," "A Worn Path," and "Where Is the Voice Coming From?"; the novel The Optimist's Daughter; the essay "Is Phoenix Jackson's Grandson Really Dead?"; and the memoir One Writer's Beginnings are included in the Eudora Welty Digital Archives.


1 Series

Eudora Welty Digital Archives Other Media

Works of art on paper in Series 42 of the Eudora Welty Collection by Mississippi artists William Eggleston, William Hollingsworth, Helen Jay Lotterhos, and Mildred Nungester Wolfe and an unidentified artist, as well as sound recordings of various interviews with Welty in the Audiovisual Collection were selected for digitization in the NEH grant. Due to rights restrictions, the digital images of artworks and the sound recordings are available only in the William F. Winter Archives and History Building. A link to previously digitized videos produced for Eudora Welty's episode of The Writer in America is also provided.


3 Series

Eudora Welty Digital Archives Photographs

Eudora Welty was an accomplished photographer as well as a writer. The Eudora Welty Collection Series 26, 27, and 28 feature photographic images of and by Eudora Welty and her family members and friends. Included are images of people, landscapes, and scenes of Mississippi and foreign and domestic travel. Due to copyright and publicity concerns, a few of these scans are available only in the William F. Winter Archives and History Building.