Eudora Welty (Modern Critical Views: Contemporary Americans) (1986), by noted literary scholars Harold Bloom and William Golding, provides biographical and critical overviews to aid the student of Welty's novels and short stories.

Fellow Mississippian William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying (1930) is the story of a poor southern family on a journey to bury their mother. While this book touches on some of the same issues as The Optimist's Daughter (such as death, grief, and family relationships), Faulkner's treatment of these themes is dramatically different from Welty's.

Flannery O'Connor's The Complete Stories (1996) provides a comprehensive look at the short stories of another important female writer from the South. O'Connor, like Welty, also wrote novels but is more strongly associated with short fiction.

Welty's Collected Stories of Eudora Welty (1982) includes all forty-one of her published short stories. Welty is recognized primarily for her...