Darlene Harbour Unrue - Selected Letters of Katherine Anne Porter

Selected Letters of
Katherine Anne Porter

CHRONICLES OF A MODERN WOMAN

Edited by Darlene Harbour Unrue

www.upress.state.ms.us

The University Press of Mississippi is a member
of the Association of American University Presses.

Copyright 2012 by University Press of Mississippi
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America

First printing 2012

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Porter, Katherine Anne, 18901980.

[Correspondence. Selections]
Selected letters of Katherine Anne Porter: chronicles
of a modern woman / edited by Darlene Harbour Unrue.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-61703-620-0 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-61703-621-7 (ebook) 1. Porter, Katherine Anne,
18901980Correspondence. 2. Authors, American
20th centuryCorrespondence. I. Unrue, Darlene
Harbour. II. Title.
PS3531.O752Z48 2012
813.52dc23

[B] 2011052326

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

For Jane

When Isabel Bayleys long-awaited Letters of Katherine Anne Porter appeared in 1990, it was received enthusiastically but with a concurrent awareness that it must eventually be supplemented. Bayleys collection covers Porters letter-writing life from 1930 through 1963 with an addendum of one 1964 letter and one 1966 letter. As George Hendrick, an early and respected Porter scholar, pointed out in a review of the Bayley edition in Choice, by 1930 Porter was forty years old, and her formative years, the period of experience that provided the sources for her highly acclaimed stories and novellas, lay behind her. We need those early letters, he wrote. He might have added that letters from the last seventeen years of Porters life, years in which she was evaluating her history, settling affairs and scores, and clarifying her aesthetic, were also needed to complete the personal record.

Because of the omissions, Bayleys edition does not approach a life in letters. Indeed, the equivalent of a full biography was not her intention. A devoted friend to Porter for many years and her literary trustee from 1974 until her death in 1993, she selected thirty-three years of letters that collectively would be a crown for Katherine Anne Porter in her one-hundredth-birthday year by revealing the mind and spirit of a much-admired woman Bayley found largely absent in biographies that appeared in the aftermath of Porters death in 1980.

With that specific aim, Bayley chose 271 postcards and letters for her collection, almost none of which, except the postcards, is presented in its entirety. Although the letters I have selected are half the number in Bayleys edition, they are complete, even when uncommonly long. I was guided in my selection primarily by my desire to present as much as possible of Porters view of her moment in history.

The letters here have been transcribed literally, preserving Porters misspellings, British spellings, and eccentric habits of punctuation, including her general avoidance of, or misuse of, apostrophes and the insertion of multiple points, dashes, or other typographical symbols that range from two to more than a dozen. There are no ellipses in these letters, a fact necessary to stress because the running points sometimes appear to represent editorial excisions. Anything in brackets is my own insertion. I silently corrected typographical errors, and I have not identified handwritten insertions as such in typed letters.

The following abbreviations in the headings describe the physical form of each letter:

The pages cited in each heading refer to the number of sides of pages on which the letter was written, regardless of size. The repository named refers to the location of the original letter. The following abbreviations indicate specific repositories:

Abbreviations of the names of amanuenses:

Because of her varied experiences and numerous acquaintances and friends, Porters letters are richly infused with names of people, events, and artistic works of all kinds. I have provided no notes for well-known names or those easily found online or in common reference works or current editions of standard collegiate dictionaries. For additional background beyond that provided in the chronology of Porters life, the identification of recipients, and notes, the following bibliographies and biographical and critical studies are recommended:

Kathryn Hilt and Ruth M. Alvarez, Katherine Anne Porter: An Annotated Bibliography (1990); annotated bibliographies in issues of the Newsletter of The Katherine Anne Porter Society