Carson McCullers was born in Columbus, Georgia, as Lula
Carson Smith on February 19, 1917. Though she moved from the South in
1934 and only returned for visits, most of her writing was inspired by
her southern heritage. When nine years of age, Lula began studying
piano, planning a career as a concert pianist. In 1930 she began using
the name Carson. Carson graduated from Columbus High School in 1933,
and after her piano teacher moved away in the spring of 1934, Carson
moved to New York City to study at the Juilliard School of Music.
To support herself she worked at various jobs and attended
night classes in creative writing at Columbia and New York University.
She focused on short stories at first. Carson returned to Columbus in
mid 1935 where she met Reeves McCullers, a soldier, whom she married
in 1937. They were divorced in 1941 but remarried in 1945. Shortly
after she left him in 1953 he committed suicide. Carson experienced
success early with the publication of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter in
1940 when she was only twenty-three. Its themes foreshadowed nearly
everything she wrote thereafter, namely spiritual isolation as the
human condition in modern times, and her identification with, and
compassion for, the underdogs and outcasts of society. Reflections in
a Golden Eye (1941) was greeted by mixed reviews and was generally
considered not as successful as her first novel. Carson suffered the
first of several strokes in 1941, believed to be the result of a
misdiagnosed case of rheumatic fever which had damaged her heart when
she was fifteen.
After receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1942 and a
$1000 grant from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1943,
McCullers was able to work on her next novel, The Member of the
Wedding (1946), which again won high critical acclaim. She adapted the
novel for the stage where it became a Broadway hit in 1950, running
fourteen and a half months and winning the New York Drama Critics'
Circle Award and the Donaldson Award. McCullers was awarded a Gold
Medal by the Theatre Club, Inc. as the best playwright of the year. In
1952 the play was turned into a succcessful motion picture. The Ballad
of the Sad Cafe, often considered her finest work, was published as a
novella in 1951. It was adapted by Edward Albee for the Broadway stage
in the 1963-1964 season but had only limited success.
Carson's next project, The Square Root of Wonderful, was
her first attempt to write a play from its inception. The play went
through numerous revisions and finally opened on Broadway on October
30, 1957, but received poor reviews and closed after forty-five
performances. The play was published in 1958. Because of her
despondency over her paralyzing strokes and the play's failure,
McCullers began seeing psychiatrist Dr. Mary Mercer who had a very
positive effect on her, inspiring her to continue writing, and who
became a lifelong friend.
Clock without Hands, her final novel, appeared in 1961.
Though it made the best-seller lists for five months, it received
mixed reviews in the United States and is the only one of her novels
not adapted for the screen.
In addition to her five novels and two plays, McCullers
wrote twenty short stories, over two dozen articles and essays, and
some poetry and verse. On August 15, 1967 she suffered a stroke and
remained in a coma until her death on September 29.
Awards
Carson McCullers received numerous awards for her work
throughout the years, including the Prize of the Younger Generation in
1965, and the Henry Bellamann Award in 1966 in recognition of her
"outstanding contribution to literature.", The Guggenheim Fiction
Fellowship in 1943 for "The Ballad of the Sad Café", numerous awards
for her play "The Member of the Wedding", The Henry Bellmann Award.
Novels
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter ( 1940 )
Reflections in a
Golden Eye ( 1941 )
The Ballad of the Sad Café ( 1943 )
The
Member of the Wedding ( 1946 )
Clock Without Hands ( 1961
)
Plays
The Member of the Wedding ( 1951 )
The Square Root of
Wonderful ( 1958 )
Short Stories
Collected Stories of Carson McCullers
