One Writer’s Beginnings

The William E. Massey Sr. Lectures in the History of American Civilization

Originally given as a series of lectures at Harvard University, Eudora Welty’s One Writer’s Beginnings is her reflections on a lifetime recalled close to the end of her career. Like James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Welty’s short book traces the individuation of a writer, from the first awareness of her gifts through the development of an aesthetic understanding and the use of her gifts.