One of America's most unique writers, Carson McCullers (1917-1967) wrote about isolation, loneliness and failures in human communication in popular novels and plays set in the Southern United States, mostly in the 1940s.

Carson McCullers is considered to be a member of the "Southern gothic" tradition in American literature, and is often compared to writers like Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor. Her characters include tortured adolescents, homosexuals, and outcasts from conventional society. Several of her novels were popular, but critics have disagreed about her achievements. Because of her fluid, nuanced prose, she is most appreciated by other writers. Gore Vidal said her "genius for prose remains one of the few satisfying achievements of our second-rate culture." Playwright Tennessee Williams spoke of the "intensity and nobility of spirit" in her writing.

Lonely Heart

Lula Carson Smith was born in 1917 in Columbus, Georgia. She was a precocious child encouraged by...