The Eudora Welty House in Jackson, Mississippi was the home of author Eudora Welty for nearly 80 years. It was built by her parents in 1925. In it she did all her writing, in an upstairs bedroom. Welty created the garden over decades. The house was first declared a Mississippi Landmark in 2001, added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2002, and declared a National Historic Landmark in 2004. This was part of a raised awareness of the significance of authors and literary life in the United States.
The house was restored by the Eudora Welty Foundation and State of Mississippi. In 2006 the house and garden were opened to the public as a museum. The renovation of the house and garden is part of a larger effort to celebrate and promote Mississippi's literary heritage as a means of developing tourism to the state.
Famous quotes containing the words eudora welty, welty and/or house:
“... my mother ... piled up her hair and went out to teach in a one-room school, mountain children little and big alike. The first day, some fathers came along to see if she could whip their children, some who were older than she. She told the children that she did intend to whip them if they became unruly and refused to learn, and invited the fathers to stay if they liked and she’d be able to whip them too. Having been thus tried out, she was a great success with them after that.”
—Eudora Welty (b. 1909)
“Writing fiction has developed in me an abiding respect for the unknown in a human lifetime and a sense of where to look for the threads, how to follow, how to connect, find in the thick of the tangle what clear line persists. The strands are all there: to the memory nothing is ever really lost.”
—Eudora Welty (b. 1909)
“If the main timbers in the house are not straight, the smaller timbers will be unsafe; and if the smaller timbers are not straight, the house will fall.”
—Chinese proverb.