Carson McCullers

Carson McCullers (1917-1967), American writer, born in Columbus, Georgia. Born Carson Smith, she attended classes at the Juilliard School and at Columbia and New York universities in the late 1930s. She married Reeves McCullers in 1937. Her first novel, which enjoyed critical success, was The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940). The novels Reflections in a Golden Eye (1941) and The Member of the Wedding (1946) followed; all three were produced in film versions (1968, 1967, and 1953, respectively). The author adapted The Member of the Wedding for the stage in 1950. The rest of her work consists of a collection of short fiction, The Ballad of the Sad Café (1951); a play, The Square Root of Wonderful (1958); a novel, Clock Without Hands (1961); and the stories, articles, and verse in The Mortgaged Heart (1971). For her work McCullers drew upon her childhood in the southern United States and on her feeling for lonely, misfit, and outcast individuals. The artistry with which she treated her themes gained her a reputation for sensitivity and compassion.