Belles-lettres: Eudora Welty on the Life of Gardening

Tell+About+Night+Flowers For many writers, the life of letters and flowers are closely intertwined: Emily Dickinson created a herbarium (a homemade book of pressed plant specimens) when she was just fourteen; Sir Walter Scott designed the garden that surrounds his home in Scotland; William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy planted peas, beans, turnips, and broccoli around their more wildly-kept grounds of Dove Cottage; and playwright George Bernard Shaw’s ashes rest in his beloved Hertfordshire garden.

Tell about Night Flowers: Eudora Welty’s Gardening Letters, 1940-1949, a new collection of letters selected, edited, and introduced by English Professor Dr. Julia Eichelberger and published by the University of Mississippi Press, enriches our understanding of Welty’s life and the tradition of writers who take up both trowel and pen.

Though the deep archival work that such projects require can often seem a solitary endeavor, Professor Eichelberger built a community around this project by inviting several CofC undergraduate and graduate students to assist with the process of research and editing.

Read more about Dr. Eichelberger’s book here.