News Releases

Mississippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH) is pleased to announce that The Eudora Welty Digital Archives is now available to the public on the MDAH website. This digitization project was funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities with a matching contribution from the Eudora Welty Foundation. 

The Eudora Welty Digital Archives represents only a sample of Welty-related material housed at MDAH and features selections of correspondence, manuscripts, photographs, and other media related to Eudora Welty (1909-2001), master of the short story and one of America's greatest authors. 

"MDAH is grateful to the National Endowment for the Humanities for their generous grant which allowed for the construction of the world's most extensive digital archive of Eudora Welty materials," said Katie Blount, director of MDAH. "We are excited to share this incredible resource with researchers and fans of Eudora Welty."

Eudora Welty had a long relationship with the MDAH, making her first donation of manuscripts, papers, and photographs in 1957, and continuing to donate throughout her life. In addition to documents, the collection includes the house where Welty lived most of her life and wrote her greatest works, her furniture, art, and books, and the garden in which she worked alongside her mother. The complete collection is accessible at the MDAH.

Eudora Welty was born on April 13, 1909, the daughter of Christian Webb Welty and Chestina Andrews Welty. In 1925 the family moved to 1119 Pinehurst Street in Jackson, where Welty would reside until her death. Welty graduated from Jackson's Central High School in 1925, attended Mississippi State College for Women, University of Wisconsin, and Columbia University in New York City.

She received a Guggenheim Fellowship and the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for her book, The Optimist's Daughter—originally published in The New Yorker in 1969. Welty was also an accomplished photographer.

From 1955 to 1970, Eudora Welty published two short stories dealing with the Civil Rights Movement, "Where Is the Voice Coming From?" and "The Demonstrators," and worked on scenes for a novel while caring for her family.  

Eudora Welty died in Jackson on July 23, 2001. 

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this database do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.                              

For more information call 601-576-6850, or email info@mdah.ms.gov.