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The Optimist's Daughter Summary
Eudora Welty

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The Optimist's Daughter Summary & Study Guide

30 The Optimist's Daughter Lessons
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60 Short Essay Questions
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The Optimist's Daughter Summary

The first version of Eudora Welty's best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Optimist's Daughter, appeared as a short story in 1969 in the New Yorker. Revised and published as a novel in 1972, it is considered by some to be her sparest novel. In fact, Welty herself thought of the novel as more akin to a short story than a true novel. The book's complexity arises not from its length but from the emotions of the...

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Eudora Welty Biographies (6)

Eudora Welty

5,277 words, approx. 18 pages

Eudora Welty (born 1909) is considered one of the most important authors of the twentieth century. Although the majority of her stories were set in the American South and reflected the region's langua... Read more

Eudora Welty

4,336 words, approx. 15 pages

With the publication of The Eye of the Story and The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty, American fiction-writer Eudora Welty achieved the recognition she had long deserved. Her position was confirmed ... Read more

Eudora Welty

6,939 words, approx. 24 pages

Eudora Welty 's importance lies in the fact that during the past four decades she has produced an original and enduring body of fiction. Independent of any specific literary group, clear even of the i... Read more

Eudora Welty

9,153 words, approx. 31 pages

Eudora Welty 's achievement in the short-story genre is primarily in the area of form. Several other writers could be said to have introduced the subject matter of the South to the American short stor... Read more

Eudora Welty

9,451 words, approx. 32 pages

Although Eudora Welty has considered herself primarily a short-story writer, and although her earliest critical acclaim resulted from her brilliant experiments with form in that genre, it was not un... Read more

Eudora Welty

7,903 words, approx. 27 pages

Biography EssayEudora Welty's importance lies in the fact that during the past four decades she has produced an original and enduring body of fiction. Independent of any specific literary group, clear... Read more

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