The Ponder Heart

New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1954. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. A novella set in a fictional Mississippi county. It was first published in the December 5, 1953, issue of the New Yorker, where it was the only feature that month. This hardcover edition, officially published on January 7, 1954, is illustrated with line drawings by Joe Krush.

156 pages. First edition (stated). A very good copy in a very good, slightly spine-faded dust jacket with light wear to the spine ends. The bottom edge of the boards are shelf worn.

This copy is inscribed to one of Welty's long-time friends, Willie Spann, "For Willie and Miss Pearl, with lots of love from Eudora. Christmas, 1953." This may be one of Welty's personal copies, presented to her friends, or they could have purchased it from the Office Supply Company in Jackson, Mississippi. The Office Supply Company made exclusive arrangements with the publisher to sell copies before Christmas (see Jackson Clarion-Register, December 6, 1953, p. 35). In either case, copies of this book inscribed before publication are scarce.

Welty seems to have been friends with Willie Spann for many years; Miss Pearl may have been a companion or servant. In a 1944 letter, Welty recounts her activities on Christmas Day, "In the afternoon I went over to Willie Spann's-she is down in the bed for Christmas-I took her and Miss Pearl a glass of eggnog and visited on the bed a while."-Eudora Welty: A Biography by Suzanne Marrs, p. 124.