Collected Stories of Carson McCullers

Carson McCullers

Sep 1998 · Sold by HMH

About this ebook

In one volume, the complete short fiction of the author of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, including her two most renowned novellas.

Carson McCullers—novelist, dramatist, poet—was at the peak of her powers as a writer of short fiction. Here are nineteen stories that explore her signature themes including loneliness in marriage and the tragicomedy of life in the South. Included in this volume are “The Member of the Wedding” and “The Ballad of the Sad Café,” novellas that Tennessee Williams judged to be “assuredly among the masterpieces of our language.”

“McCullers patented the Southern gothic genre that embraces grotesque, morbid characters with such pervading themes as unrequited love and wounded adolescence. Largely set in the South and richly autobiographical, her writings have endured because of their great power and originality.” —Library Journal

Ratings and reviews

I took something away from every story. But even if you only like half of them, it's well worth reading. Her generosity of spirit alone is worth experiencing.

... from a time gone by, but set in places, actual or simply renamed, that still very much exist; while said locales are physically much transformed, the morality (or maybe just the lack thereof) remains, oddly, almost intact. For those of us from the South, it's home -- warts and all.

About the author

Carson McCullers (1917–1967) was the author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction, including The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, The Member of the Wedding, Reflections in a Golden Eye, and Clock Without Hands. Born in Columbus, Georgia, on February 19, 1917, she became a promising pianist and enrolled in the Juilliard School of Music in New York when she was seventeen, but lacking money for tuition, she never attended classes. Instead, she studied writing at Columbia University, which ultimately led to The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, the novel that made her an overnight literary sensation. On September 29, 1967, at age fifty, she died in Nyack, New York, where she is buried.