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Carson McCullers Research

The Archives works closely with the Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians to acquire and preserve manuscript, print, photographic, and audio materials which document the life and work of the author. The Archives contains a wide variety of both primary and secondary source materials produced by or about the writer. Materials are collected in a variety of formats, and several individual manuscript collections contain pertinent information. Some of the holdings related to Carson McCullers include: 

• McCullers monographs, which include materials both by and about the author. These materials are searchable in GIL and available in the Archives Reading Room. 
• Photographs
• Audio cassettes and records
• Carson McCullers Society Newsletters

In addition, a variety of archival collections are available for research, including: 

• The Bradley Memorial Library Carson McCullers Collection MC 184
• Loretto Chappell Collection MC 29
• Carlos Dews Collection MC 175
• Mary Martha Johnson Photograph Collection SMC 53
• Clason Kyle Collection MC 86
• Jordan-Massee-Carson McCullers Collection MC 170
• Reflections: A Carson McCullers Symposium Collection MC 183
• The Valley Reads The Heart is a Lonely Hunter Collection MC 179
• Virginia Spencer Carr Collection MC 23
• John Zeigler and Edwin Peacock Collection MC 182

Brief Biography of Carson McCullers

Born Lula Carson Smith in Columbus, Georgia on February 19, 1917, the author-to-be spent her childhood and teenage years in the town of her birth. After graduating from Columbus High School, the aspiring author moved to New York City. In 1937 she married James Reeves McCullers, and at the age of 23 published her first novel, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940). This novel established McCullers as an author, and she continued to write, completing three other novels and a collection of short stories: Reflections in a Golden Eye (1941), The Member of the Wedding (1946), The Ballad of the Sad Café (1951), and Clock Without Hands (1961). Her other works include a  play, The Square Root of Wonderful. McCullers, who suffered a series of three strokes which eventually left her partially paralyzed, died in Nyack, New York on September 29, 1967.