Correspondence Calendar, 1931–1977: Letters between Eudora Welty and Frank LyellEudora Welty Collection, Mississippi Department of Archives and History Julia Eichelberger Introduction The correspondence calendar is a loosely defined genre. The chief inspiration for this one is chapter 3 of Suzanne Marrs's 1988 book The Welty Collection.1 The Eudora Welty Collection at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH) holds a vast storehouse of material that scholars are only beginning to mine, twenty years after her death. She began donating her papers to MDAH in 1957 when Welty's friend Charlotte Capers was director. In 1985, MDAH commissioned Marrs to reorganize the Welty Collection and write a guide, which was published in 1988. "Chapter 3: Correspondence Calendar" enumerates over 200 items of correspondence at MDAH, most of them written to and not by Welty. Since publication of The Welty Collection, fourteen thousand items of correspondence have been added, including hundreds written by Welty and her friend Frank Lyell. Of the 98 archival boxes of letters to and from Welty, ten house the Welty-Lyell correspondence, with eight boxes of letters from Welty. All told, the collection contains over 600 Welty-Lyell letters, documenting a friendship that lasted from 1930 to Lyell's death in July 1977. Publication is clearly warranted, since so few letters have yet been reprinted, [End Page 7] quoted, or even cited;2 thus, I am working on a single volume of selected letters between Welty and Lyell.3 This correspondence calendar enumerates all the Welty-Lyell letters at MDAH. Following Marrs's example, I characterize the correspondence as a whole before beginning the calendar, divided into three sections, where I list and briefly describe each letter. In addition to providing a reference guide for researchers interested in a particular period of time, the calendar offers a glimpse of a larger narrative, the story of a friendship that spanned almost fifty years. In order to recognize this story as it unfolds in my brief summaries, some knowledge of the two correspondents' lives is useful. Welty (1909–2001) and Lyell (1911–1977) were part of an intellectual, talented, fun-loving group from Jackson, many of whom had been friends since childhood. Welty and Lyell, however, became friends as young adults. Both their families moved into the Belhaven neighborhood in 1925. Welty left for college soon afterwards, graduating in 1929, and met Lyell in 1930 as she and several Jackson friends were preparing to begin graduate studies at Columbia University. Upon learning of these plans, Lyell, newly graduated from the University of Virginia at age 19 and bound for Columbia's MA program in English, introduced himself to Welty and the friendship began. She took courses in advertising, but both she and Lyell spent much [End Page 8] of their time enjoying the city. In a scrapbook Lyell later made about his 1930–31 year in New York, letters and memorabilia record how often he and Welty attended plays, movies, concerts, museums, and nightclubs together.4 The first section of the Correspondence Calendar covers the years 1931 to 1946, beginning with a postcard mailed soon after Lyell had finished his MA program and before he set out for a "grand tour" of Europe. The card was mailed to Jackson. Welty was expecting to continue at Columbia that fall, but in September her father had died. She remained in Jackson but often went to New York to enjoy city life, as Lyell did, and to try to land a job or find a publisher for her stories and photographs. Lyell continued his graduate studies at Princeton University, so the friends sometimes met in the city, and they saw each other regularly in Jackson during summers and holidays. In 1935, Lyell got his first teaching job at North Carolina State College in Raleigh. Welty continued living at her family's home, writing fiction, taking photographs, and working a variety of gigs and jobs: journalism and society column-writing, professional photography, substitute teaching, and producing the newsletter of a local radio station.5 In 1936, as "junior publicity agent" for the Works Progress Administration, Welty visited many rural locations in the state and filed press releases on...