A Curtain of Green
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 First edition cover | |
| Author | Eudora Welty |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Short story collection |
| Published | Doubleday |
Publication date | 1941 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (hardback) |
| Pages | 289 |
| OCLC | 794401 |
A Curtain of Green was the first collection of short stories written by Eudora Welty. Published by Doubleday in 1941, the volume includes an introduction by Katherine Anne Porter.[1]
In these stories, Welty looks at the state of Mississippi through the eyes of its inhabitants, the common people, both black and white, and presents a realistic view of the racial relations that existed at the time. Welty, though, looks past race, not overtly focusing on the subject, and sees Mississippi as what it is. The stories subtly combine myth and reality to create portraits of odd, but undeniable, beauty.
One of the most anthologized pieces in the collection is titled "A Worn Path." Welty's skill as a writer perhaps reaches its finest point with this story of an aging woman who faces her greatest obstacle, the journey of life as she tries to cope with the grief from the death of her grandson she goes through a journey comparable to a Greek epic.
- "Lily Daw and the Three Ladies" (Prairie Schooner, Winter 1937)
- "A Piece of News" (The Southern Review, Summer 1937)
- "Petrified Man" (The Southern Review, Summer 1937)
- "The Key" (Harper's Bazaar, August 1941)
- "Keela, the Outcast Indian Maiden" (New Directions in Prose & Poetry, 1940)
- "Why I Live at the P.O." (The Atlantic, April 1941)
- "The Whistle" (Prairie Schooner, Fall 1938)
- "The Hitch-Hikers" (The Southern Review, Fall 1939)
- "A Memory" (The Southern Review, Fall 1937)
- "Clytie" (The Southern Review, Summer 1941)
- "Old Mr. Marblehall" (The Southern Review, Spring 1938; a.k.a "Old Mr. Grenada")
- "Flowers for Marjorie" (Prairie Schooner, Summer 1937)
- "A Curtain of Green" (The Southern Review, Fall 1938)
- "A Visit of Charity" (Decision, A Review of Free Culture, June 1941)
- "Death of a Traveling Salesman" (Manuscript magazine, May 1936)
- "Powerhouse" (The Atlantic, June 1941)
- "A Worn Path" (The Atlantic, February 1941)
Background
"Given Welty’s visual mind, we should not be surprised to find that she uses a visual technique as the fundamental organizing principle in her stories."—Literary critic and poet Carol Ann Johnston in Eudora Welty: A Study of the Short Fiction.[2]
During her highly production years 1937 and 1938, Welty was writing fiction as yet “destined to be classics of the short-story genre.”[3] Encouraged by Ford Madox Ford and Katherine Anne Porter, among others, Welty felt assured that she could successfully pursue a literary career.[4] John Woodburn, seeking talent for Doubleday, visited Welty at her Mississippi home during a tour of the South. In May 1940, Doubleday requested Diarmuid Russell, a literary agent, to offer his services to Welty; she accepted. Rather than insist she produce a novel, as G. P. Putnam's Sons and Harcourt Brace had indicated, Russell invited her to New York to write material for a short story collection.[5] Welty continued to produce stories during that year—among these” A Worn Path” and “Why I Live at the P.O.—but Russell found it difficult to place much of her material in major periodicals, a crucial precursor to book publication. By early 1941, Russell had commitments for journal publication of all works that would appear in A Curtain of Green.[6]
John Woodburn at Doubleday accepted terms for publication on January 21, 1941, after which Welty “fine-tuned” the fiction for upcoming publication in a number of periodicals (See Stories section below for periodicals). A Curtain of Green appeared later in 1941 with an Introduction by Katherine Anne Porter.[7]
