Critical Essays On Carson Mccullers

Carson returned to Columbus in mid 1935 where she met Reeves Mc Cullers, a soldier, whom she married in 1937. 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.Manuscripts for her collected works include Collected Short Stories and the Novel The Ballad of the Sad Cafe (1952), as well as The Mortgaged Heart (1971), edited by her sister, Margarita G. Numerous holograph drafts and typescripts for her play, The Square Root of Wonderful (1958), are found here as well. Mahoney," (1949), "A Domestic Dilemma" (1951), "The Haunted Boy" (1955), "The March" (1967), "The Sojourner" (1950), and "Who Has Seen the Wind" (1956).

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.

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.

Mc Cullers was awarded a Gold Medal by the Theatre Club, Inc. In 1952 the play was turned into a succcessful motion picture.

Additional correspondents can be identified using the Index of Correspondents located at the end of this finding aid.

The Miscellaneous Series contains various adaptations of Mc Cullers' works including Ballad of the Sad Cafe (stage adaptation by Edward Albee and materials from the Merchant Ivory Productions film), The Member of the Wedding (French stage adaptation by André Bay and a musical adaptation by Theodore Mann and G.

Works by other authors, among them Elizabeth Bowen, Katherine Garrison Chapin, David Diamond, A. Hotchner, Victor Sawdon Pritchett, Vinnie Williams, Vurrell Yentzen, and R. This series also contains extensive third-party correspondence, much of it pertaining to Mc Cullers and written to her sister, Margarita G.

Smith, with the majority from Mc Cullers' attorneys, Fitelson and Mayers, her publisher, Houghton Mifflin and Company, and her agent Robert Lantz. Elsewhere in the Center are forty Vertical File folders which contain playbills, reviews of Mc Cullers' work, and newspaper articles about her life, writings, awards, and death.

In 1930 she began using the name Carson and studying piano with Mary Tucker.

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.