Eudora Welty House
Introduction
Text-to-speech Audio
Eudora Welty, one of the most influential writers of the 20th century, lived in this house from 1925 until her death in 2001. The home is now a National Historic Landmark and a museum operated by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, which preserves and interprets the place where she wrote many of her significant works. Highlights of Welty's career include the short stories that initially brought her acclaim, as well as award-winning novels such as Delta Wedding, The Optimist's Daughter, and Losing Battles. The property includes a Tudor Revival-style house built by her father in 1925, a garage, and the surrounding grounds and garden. Born in Jackson in 1909, Welty was influenced as a child by her parents' love for books. In her writing career, which spanned five decades, Welty received the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, the National Medal of Freedom, and the French Legion of Honor.
Images
Eudora Welty House is now a museum operated by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

Backstory and Context
Text-to-speech Audio
The Welty family moved into the Belhaven neighborhood in 1925. This included a sixteen-year-old Eudora Welty, her two brothers, and her two parents. They were a family or readers whose appreciation for the literary arts is demonstrated by the thousands of books that can still be seen in the house's library today. In 1936, when she was twenty-seven, Eudora Welty published her first short story, “Death of a Traveling Salesman”. A Curtain of Green, a collection of stories, followed a few years later. These stories encompassed a variety of themes and perspectives that she had witnessed and fictionalized during her years in college in Wisconsin, working in journalism in Memphis, and moving back to Mississippi to work in radio.
During the 1940s, she began to win major literary prizes, including two Guggenheim Fellowships, published two novels and two more collections of stories, and wrote many book reviews for the New York Times. During these years, Welty traveled in England, Ireland, France, and Italy. The 1950s saw a third novel and a fourth collection of stories. These works drew inspiration from Southern folklore, fairy tales, the Plantation South, and the history of the Mississippi Delta in the early 1900s. Adding to her wide range of written work, she wrote a children's book in 1964.
During the late 1950s and '60s Welty balanced travel with work and caring for her mother—years that bore fruit in the early '70s with the novels Losing Battles and The Optimist's Daughter, the latter earning her the Pulitzer Prize. The collected essays, photographs, and memoirs from Welty's last decades were published to high acclaim, garnering a large international audience. In 1986, Eudora Welty decided to bequeath her home to the State of Mississippi. This included many of the house's original pictures, paintings, furniture, and draperies. This family home has become a testament to modern literature and the arts and is now a museum of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.
Welty received 38 honorary doctorate degrees and over 40 major literary awards throughout her lifetime, including a Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Jimmy Carter in 1980. In 1988, Welty became the first living author to have her works published by The Library of America. Eudora Welty died on July 23, 2001, at the age of 92 in Jackson, Mississippi.
Today, one can book a guided tour of the place where she wrote many of her works and learned to love the art of literature. This included Eudora Welty's mother's garden on the property. The garden spans three-quarters of an acre and features various areas separated by arbors and trellises. One highlight is the restored woodland section, which features native Mississippi flora. The 20th-century garden is authentically maintained by a group of volunteers who call themselves “The Cereus Weeders” in honor of Welty’s beloved night-blooming cereus.
Sources
http://mdah.state.ms.us/welty/ http://www.nps.gov/resources/site.htm?id=19474 https://www.facebook.com/pages/Eudora-Welty-House-Museum/224515580941053
The Eudora Welty Foundation. Accessed June 18th, 2025. https://eudorawelty.org/the-foundation/.