Eudora Welty is regarded as "the [twentieth] century's most gifted and radical practitioner of the short story." With numerous collections of compositions - stories, novels, non-fiction, and a children's book - as well as photographs, Welty has an unmistakably wide scope as a liberal artist. Her works have "an astonishing tonal range in subject and style" that is unparalleled in vastness by any other twentieth-century writer. However, Welty's mastery of story telling originates from simple backgrounds. In her essays, interviews, and best-selling memoir, Welty explains how elements in her idyllic childhood contributed to her development for an adoration of reading and writing. In an excerpt from her autobiography, One Writer's Beginnings, Eudora Welty reveals the importance of her early experiences with her mother, the librarian Mrs. Calloway, and her own desire to read on her craft as a writer.

The author's mother influences Welty with her own obsession...