Marking the fiftieth anniversary of Eudora Welty's first important publication, this special collection of critical essays celebrates her achievement as an incomparable literary artist. Since 1936, when ""Death of a Traveling Salesman"" was published, the excellence of her stories, novels, essays and collections has been giving unceasing acclaim, and she has become one of the most honored and most esteemed of American writers.

The essays in this collection convey the scholarly pleasure one finds in studying the works of Eudora Welty. Although they employ varying critical methodologies, pleasure is at the source of the examinations published in this book.

In these essays, forma, mythic, and thematic criticism from a variety of scholars offers fresh access to A Curtain of Green, The Wide Net, The Golden Apples, and Delta Wedding. One bibliographical study included shows Welty to be keenly attuned to the nuances of meaning during the writing and revising of The Optimist's Daughter, deepening, clarifying, making more precise a novel of inestimable personal feeling. In another essay, Welty's close attention to the world is examined in relation to an early story ""At the Landing,"" to the remarkable photography of One Time, One Place, and to her recent memoir, One Writer's Beginnings. Also included is a study of Eudora Welty in relation to Elizabeth Bowen, the Anglo-Irish writer.

A new interview with Miss Welty, which unifies this collection, and a checklist of Welty materials that updates Welty scholarship enhance this volume and bring further scholarly acknowledgement to this celebrated author's significant artistic stature and preeminent literary worth.