by Elizabeth Spencer (Author), Sally Greene (Compiled by), Sally Greene (Introduction by)

In conferring upon Mississippi native Elizabeth Spencer (1921-2019) the 2013 Rea Award for the Short Story, the jury said that at the then age of ninety-two, she "has thrived at the height of her powers to a degree that is unparalleled in modern letters." Over a celebrated six-decade career, Spencer published every type of literary fiction: novels and short stories, a memoir, and a play. Like her best-known work, The Light in the Piazza, most of her narratives explore the inner lives of restless, searching southern women. Yet one mercurial male character, Edward Glenn, deserves attention for the way he insists on returning to her pages. Speaking of Edward in unusually personal terms, Spencer admitted a strong attraction to his type: the elusive, intelligent southern man, "maybe an unresolved part of my psyche."

Author Biography

Elizabeth Spencer (1921-2019) is author of nine novels, seven collections of short stories, a memoir, and a play. Her novella The Light in the Piazza (1960) was adapted for the screen in 1962 and transformed into a Broadway musical of the same name in 2005. She was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Sally Greene is an independent scholar who specializes in the literature of twentieth-century British and American women. She is editor of Virginia Woolf: Reading the Renaissance, and her essays have appeared in Twentieth-Century Literature, Studies in the Novel, Southern Quarterly, Mississippi Quarterly, Southern Cultures, the American Scholar, and elsewhere.

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