Shelter and beyond, 1909-1931 -- Self discovery, 1931-1941 -- "Being apart from what matters," World War II and the home front, 1941-1945 -- "Love first and then separateness", 1945-1951 -- Finding a way out, 1951-1956 -- Losing battles, 1957-1966 -- Defending against time, 1966-1973 -- "Strong present tense," on and off the road, 1974-1980 -- "Ceaselessly into the past," self portraits, 1980-1984 -- "Lonesomeness and hilarity of survival", 1984-1991 -- "Old age hath yet her honor and her toil", 1991-2001.;First published in the 1940s, [Eudora Welty] introduced a genuinely original voice and launched a career that over the decades would include novels, novellas, reviews, and essays and would culminate in a 1984 memoir ... By the time of her death, Welty had been given nearly every literary award it is possible to receive ... The Welty who emerges in this ... biography ... is an account not of a sequestered spinster from Jackson, Mississippi, but of an inveterate traveler and a shrewd observer of her times.-Dust jacket.