Our Favorite Things

Collections of SDSU Library Staff and Faculty
August 11 through September 8, 2004

My grandmother started a paperweight collection and it was passed onto me when I was a freshman in college.

Over the years, family, friends, and colleagues have added to hers so you might say that this is an accidental collection. However, because of their origin, each one reminds me of a special person.

I began collecting Eudora Welty materials after meeting her through Frances Neel Cheney, a favorite faculty member at Vanderbilt University and a friend of Welty.  My collection includes first editions, limited and special editions, books about Welty as well as works in which she wrote introductions or short pieces. Eudora Welty won a Pulitzer Prize in 1973 for The Optimist's Daughter, which captures the complexity of families grief, and life in the South.

Welty's novels are often complex studies done with both realism and generosity, and feature portraits of a multitude of people who used to be referred to as "common" by southern upper class. Whether writing about small towns or relationships, she shows us that things which might at first glance appear simple often are not. She once said, "I am a writer who came of a sheltered life. A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within."

Welty was also an accomplished photographer often documenting life in the rural south through an honest lens, while also selflessly promoting the work of other writers and photographers.