One of the truly great works of twentieth-century American literature, Eudora Weltys Collected Stories confirms her place as a contemporary master of short fiction. Welty wrote prolifically over the course of her long career, but the heart and soul of her literary vision lay with the short story. The forty-one pieces reproduced here, written over a period of three decades, include Petrified Man, Why I Live at the P.O., The Wide Net, and The Bride of the Innisfallen. I have been told, Welty writes in the introduction, both in approval and in accusation, that I seem to love all my characters. The characters that spring to life in this masterwork reveal the depth and breadth of her love.
The richness of such talent resists a summing up...She is always honest, always just. And she is vastly entertaining. The stories are magnificent. Maureen Howard, The New York Times Book Review
Eudora Welty is one of our purest, finest, gentlest voices and this collection is something to be treasured. Anne Tyler, The Washington Star
The ironic tenderness of Chekhov, the almost feral edge of Maupassant, the ominousness of Poe and Bierce, the lacy strength of Henry Green. She is probably the finest Mozartian stylist writing in the English language. Mary Lee Settle, Saturday Review
The breadth of Weltys offering is finally most visible not in the variety of typesfarce, satire, horror, lyric, pastoral, mysterybut in the clarity and solidity and absolute honesty of a lifetimes vision. Reynolds Price, The New Republic
