Carson McCullers Center For Writers and Musicians

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Wunderkind

The years 1943 to 1950 saw the publication of what many consider McCullers' finest creative work. The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, the lyrical story of jealousy and obsession in a triangular love relationship involving an Amazon-like Miss Amelia, a hunch-backed midget Cousin Lymon and an ex-convict Marvin Macy, set in a small southern mill town, appeared in the August 1943 Harper's Bazaar. The work was later published by Houghton Mifflin in an omnibus edition of the author's work, "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe": The Novels and Stories of Carson McCullers (1951). March 1946 saw the publication of McCullers's fourth major work, The Member of the Wedding, the story of a lonely adolescent girl, Frankie Addams, who wants to find her "we of me" by joining with her older brother and his bride. McCullers' theatrical adaptation of the novel opened on Broadway in 1950 to near unanimous acclaim and enjoyed a run of 501 performances. This adaptation proved to be her most commercially successful work.

Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians, 1519 Stark Avenue, Columbus, Georgia, 31906

(706) 568-2054

Created By Patricia Gilbert