Along with such contemporaries as Tennessee Williams and Flannery O'Connor, Carson McCullers is considered a leading author of the American Southern literary tradition. While McCullers is best known as a novelist, she also mastered other genres including the short story, poetry, and drama. Her importance to American literature was established with the publication of her first novel The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter in 1940 when McCullers was twenty-three years old. Before reaching the age of thirty, she wrote two other major novels--Reflections in a Golden Eye in 1941 and The Member of the Wedding in 1946. Written within a period of six years, each of these three novels sold over half a million copies. McCullers's play adaptation of The Member of the Wedding won several drama awards and eventually all of her first three novels became successful films. Perhaps her most critically acclaimed work was a novella entitled The...