by Carson McCullers

Lula Carson Smith was born in Columbus, Georgia, in 1917 to Marguerite Waters Smith and Lamar Smith, owners of a jewelry shop. The girl's first dream was to be a concert pianist. She then resolved to become a writer and started to read all the great literature she could find. A special favorite of hers was Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa, (also covered in Literature and Its Times), a work McCullers first read in 1937, then reread annually thereafter. At age twenty-two, with only one short story in print, McCullers became an overnight celebrity when The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter appeared. The novel focuses on individuals who are outcasts in a 1930s Southern city because of racial, political, physical, and other prejudices.

Events in History at the Time the Novel Takes Place

Cotton mill towns in...