SOURCE: "'Among Those Missing': Phil Hand's Disappearance from The Optimist's Daughter," in Southern Literary Journal, Vol. 25, No. 1, Fall, 1992, pp. 74-88.

In the following essay, Wolff discusses how the character of Philip Hand, from Welty's The Optimist's Daughter, was changed as the author revised the work.

Eudora Welty published The Optimist's Daughter first as a short story in the New Yorker in 1969 and subsequently as a novel in 1972. Radically revising the character of Philip Hand during successive interim versions of the story, initially omitting and then adding, Welty finally excised most material that elaborates his character and brief marriage to Laurel. In the novel, little description of Phil remains except for a paragraph about his origins on an Ohio farm and a brief reminiscence about their wedding day, altogether amounting to no more than four pages of text. During the process of achieving the final version, Welty deleted some...