This volume offers readings of Eudora Welty's last two novels, ""Losing Battles"" (1970) and ""The Optimist's Daughter"" (1972), which won a Pulitzer prize. The essays focus on Welty's work as a novelist, although she was better known as a writer of short fiction, a critic and reviewer, a photographer, and an autobiographer. This collection seeks to stimulate interest in this aspect of the writer's talent and to serve as a guide to reading and teaching her late novels.