And elegant and intriguing look into the life of a talented writer. I enjoy the story that seem to begin from the roots of the authors beginnings in order to give full perspective on her life.

Do you often we only see the writers work, not the writer themselves and I feel like this story shows the writer in such a fresh and honest fashion.

I also enjoy the fact that it takes us back to a simpler time when the author was born and how her experiences shaped her and, no doubt, her writing.

If you enjoy biographies, this one should be on your list!

My rating: 4*

This is a reissue of a book based on a series of lectures, with a new preface by Natasha Trethewey. While not a full memoir, it is a charming reflection on stories, writing, and reading that will inspire you to tap into your own experiences and draw them into creative works. A quick read that will leave you feeling like you've visited with your auntie who just happens to be a great author.

Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity to review a temporary digital ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

Welty's reflection on the public library are reason enough to read this book. This is an important entry point into a rich fictional world. HIghly recommended.

Eudora Welty’s deeply thoughtful memoir gets a stunningly beautiful reissue complete with an introduction by acclaimed poet Natasha Trethewey. Highly recommended for writers, for lovers of southern literature, and for all who enjoy resonant storytelling.

With a lovely introduction by Natasha Trethewey and a beautiful cover, this new edition of One Writer’s Beginnings is an excellent addition to any Welty scholar or fan’s collection. It’s also a wonderful book for those who are unfamiliar with Welty, those who enjoy memoir, and those interested in writing. Highly recommend to all.

I received a free advance digital review copy from Scribner in exchange for my honest review.

One Writer's Beginnings contains the text of 3 lectures that Eudora Welty gave at Harvard University in 1983, describing with extraordinary poignancy moments from her everyday life. She reflects on her earliest childhood memories, her college years and first professional job in the Works Progress Administration, and insights about her parents that she has gleaned after both of their deaths. She describes how the clocks striking the hour and the barometer marking the weather on walls of her childhood home, and her parents' attention to these instruments, instilled in her a sense of time and atmosphere that are fundamental to storytelling and good writing. She credits her parents with fostering her love of books and reading and underscores the importance of listening "_for_ stories. . . for the unspoken as well as the spoken." She describes her memory as the "treasure most dearly regarded by [her]" in both her life and her writing. She views her memory as a "living thing," with much to be learned from the distance of reflection as well as the immediacy of experience and observation, and explains how it forms the foundation of her writing when combined with (and used to inform) her imagination.

This edition of One Writer's Beginnings is greatly enhanced by Natasha Trethewey's Introduction, written as one Mississippi writer reflecting on the life and career of another. Trethewey evokes the universal messages in Welty's work, which is both very much "rooted in a particular time and place" centered on her own experiences and yet invites the reader to consider the "story [we tell] to ourselves about our lives, the arc of them - what gives meaning and purpose, and connects us to others." As Trethewey observes, Welty's words worth reading and re-reading and stand as "an invitation to. . . meet ourselves again in our memories."

It’s difficult to find anything original to say about Eudora Welty and specifically this book, Comprised mainly of lectures given by Welty at Harvard, this volume captures the early twentieth century in the US South through the eyes of a very young child, and then of the girl and adult she became. It would be hard to find more evocative writing than that which is contained in this book, and Welty could make a fictional character come alive in a way that stays with the reader. This edition with the introduction by the gifted author of Memorial Drive, Natasha Trethewey, reminds us of what even twenty-first century writers can absorb from Ms. Welty’s relationship with the written word.

I began working my way through Eudora Welty's Collected Stories after I would stumble on recommendation after recommendation for them. Along the way, I had the opportunity to read this updated edition of her short reflective memoir. This volume was borne out of an invitation to deliver three lectures at Harvard University.

The book is broken up into three sections: Listening, Learning to See, and Finding a Voice. Within, Welty conversationally reveals vignettes from her childhood that developed her skills as a writer. Her use of language is rich, as in this line: "My mother read secondarily for information; she sank as a hedonist into novels." One aspect that stood out to me, only because of our current realities with Covid-19, were her passing mentions of her family having the Spanish Flu in 1918.

The earlier sections focus more on childhood stories, but in the last section Welty dwells more on her insights on writing and her focus when she's crafting a story: "The frame through which I viewed the world changed too, with time. Greater than scene, I came to see, is situation. Greater than situation is implication. Greater than all of these is a single, entire human being, who will never be confined in any frame."

This was a pleasure to read and has heightened my interest to returning to her short stories, which were only set aside due to more pressing commitments.

(I received a digital ARC from Scribner via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.)

So much genius in this well-structured book. It glides you through, never overwhelming you, never making it so that you have to take bite-sized pieces in order to absorb the great moments. It inspires, gets you sketching your own works, feeling as if you have been mentored by a legend. Highly recommend. Very relatable.

Eudora Welty explores her childhood, family, surroundings and all the factors that formed her into a reader and writer in her memoir entitled One Writer's Beginnings. The short book is split into three long essays that cover her schooling, upbringing, and personality through the lens of her burgeoning love for language and story.

Welty captures the vibrancy of childhood, specifically a southern upbringing, in a tight knit family. I am teaching my daughter to read right now and adored hearing Welty explain the magic of reading for the first time. She gifted me a glimpse into my daughter's mind and the worlds she is currently unlocking. It was very visceral and meaningful for me to read this book alongside teaching my daughter.

I loved the new introduction by Tretheway. I had just read her book Memorial Drive a few weeks before reading One Writer's Beginnings, and it set up the book well. I wasn't sure what to expect with this book, but I'm so glad I picked it up. This was my first book by Welty, and I hope it won't be my last.

One Writer's Beginnings
by Eudora Welty
Scribner
Biographies & Memoirs
Pub Date 03 Nov 2020




I am reviewing a copy of One Writer’s Beginnings through Scribner and Netgalley:


Eudora Welty was born in 1909 in Jackson Mississippi and she died in 2001. In this book Eudora Welty shares details of her upbringing that show us how her family and her surroundings contributed to the shaping not only of her personality but of her writing as well. She talks about how everyday sights and sounds and objects resonated with her, everything from the striking of clocks, to the Victorla and her orphaned Fathers coverless little book saved since boyhood, the tall mountains of the West Virginia back country that became a metaphor for her mother’s sturdy independence. She goes on to talk about how her earliest box camera allowed her to suspend a moment forever and taught her that every feeling awaits a gesture.






This book includes vivid descriptions of growing up in the south, the interplay between black and white, between town and countryside, the relationship between dedicated school teachers and the students they taught. she recreates the vanished world of her youth with the same subtlety and insight that mark her fiction, capturing “the mysterious transfiguring gift by which dream, memory, showing us how experience becomes art.





One Writer’s Beginnings is in part memoir, in part about exploring creativity and its seeds. This book offers a glimpse into the Mississippi Childhood that allowed Eudora Welty to become the critically acclaimed and important author she would become.




I give One Writer’s Beginnings Five out of five stars!



Happy Reading!

This book stems from a series of three lectures delivered by Eudora Welty at Harvard in 1983-- I am reviewing a reissue with a new introduction. I never read the book when it was originally released, and in fact know very little about Welty. It was fascinating to learn about what it was like growing up at the beginning of the last century: the car and train rides, the enjoyment of the Victrola, the piano teacher who swatted students' hands when they made a mistake. Welty also provided insight into what makes a writer, and how her observations translated into some of her fictional characters. I would definitely like to read more of Welty's fiction now, and appreciate the publisher and Netgalley giving me the opportunity to review this ARC.

Charming, and worthy. For any aspiring writer, lots of absorb here. But clearly an adaptation from lectures by Welty. Not conceived as a book, nor does it really stand up a memoir, or as a writer's guide. Falls in between the two. Still, she has stories to tell, and experience to offer.

It's wonderful to see a new edition of this superb book. Eudora Welty's iconic position in American literary illuminates each of the essays in it, centered on creativity. Every writer should have this volume on her/his shelf.

Eudora Welty is an American icon. She wrote short stories and novels, as well as being a noted photographer. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1972 for The Optimist’s Daughter. This book was based on a series of addresses she gave at Harvard University, and it was first published in 1983. It was on the NYT best seller list for over 32 weeks. It will be republished in October 2020. Eudora was born in Jackson, Mississippi and she writes of the South from a Southern perspective. Her parents were from Ohio and West Virginia, and so her upbringing was influenced by their perspectives as well. She was a “born writer,” and she grew into a great one. This book shares her early childhood, stressing the influence of her immediate and extended family on her life. She was a keen observer of each new thing she experienced and how it impacted her future writing. It was interesting to get inside the head of a writer of this caliber

A beautifully written book that allows the reader to experience a life and time in the U.S. no longer in existence. The book brings back strong but forgotten memories of childhood, as the author remembers the things that children notice (and with all of their senses) but adults do not. .

A collection of essays written by Ms. Welty about creativity. Very insightful and useful!

Many thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for my ARC. All opinions are my own.

Born in Jackson, Missouri in 1909, this autobiography- memoir was, in 1983, given as part of Harvard’s William E. Massey Sr. Lecture series, in three separate talks to students eager to learn from her years of writing.

Reading this brought me back in time to the stories my paternal grandparents each shared with me, the stories of their childhood and even those of their parents and grandparents. Even though I learned to read young – taught by my older brother when he first learned to read in school – my grandfather, especially, was the one who instilled a love of reading in me. This reminded me of sitting beside my grandfather as he typed out his poetry, and helping him choose his words. I can still hear the click of the keys on the typewriter; still see the small desk and the old typewriter on that small surface, and the feeling of being included, and understanding, even then, that language was important when writing anything.

”Children, like animals,” Welty writes, “use all their senses to discover the world.”

In the Introduction, Natasha Trethewey says that each time she read One Writer’s Beginnings that each time I meet myself in her words. Even though this is the first time I’ve read this – although it’s been on my list to read for years – I shared that feeling, those moments where I could relate so much to the feelings she expressed, the joy of that first box camera, even though I’m sure they were entirely different makes and years. The stories of her father giving them lessons on life, the kind that end up being a part of you.

”It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming up of themselves like grass. Yet regardless of where they came from, I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them—with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself. “

Her stories on reading, of being read to are charming, and wonderful. Her memories of visiting their local library are priceless. Her thoughts on writing, formed by her love of reading, and being read to are just lovely to read. She also shares her memories of her summer trips to visit her grandparents in West Virginia and Ohio, and which brought back so many memories to me.

”Ever since I was first read to, then started reading to myself, there has never been a line read that I didn’t hear. As my eyes followed the sentence, a voice was saying it silently to me. It isn’t my mother’s voice, or the voice of any person I can identify, certainly not my own. It is human, but inward, and it is inwardly that I listen to it. It is to me the voice of the story or the poem itself. The cadence, whatever it is that asks you to believe, the feeling that resides in the printed word, reaches me through the reader-voice. I have supposed, but never found out, that this is the case with all readers — to read as listeners — and with all writers, to write as listeners . . . The sound of what falls on the page begins the process of testing it for truth, for me…When I write and the sound of it comes back to my ears, then I act to make my changes. I have always trusted this voice.”

A gem for readers and writers, alike.


Pub Date: 20 Oct 2020

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Scribner

This sweetly written book is based on a series of three lectures Eudora Welty gave at Harvard several decades ago. While one might expect the author to focus on her writing life, the book actually features stories of her childhood and of her parents and grandparents. If you are interested in what life was like in the early twentieth century and late nineteenth century, this would make an excellent primary source. The book lulls you along with gentle stories of earlier times.

An iconic classic with a luminous introduction by Natasha Trethewey, one of the most exciting authors writing today. A must-read for any reader and especially for any writer.