Endora Welty Finishes Lectures On Her Own 'Beginnings'

"I am a writer cone of a sheltered life," Eudora Welty said in concluding a three-day lecture series at Longfellow Hall yesterday afternoon entitled. "One writer's Beginnings."

Crowds of more than 450 swarmed the auditorium to hear all three of the Southern writer's talks, which were part of the new William B. Massey Sr. lecture series in the History of American Civilization program at Harvard.

An anonymous donor gave the program $200,000 to establish the annual series, the largest gift in the history of the program, David H. Donald, Warren Professor of American History and chairman of the American Civilization Committee, said yesterday.

Each speaker in the series will address a different area of American culture, Donald said, adding that because Massey, a Virginian businessman, comes from the South, it was especially appropriate to ask Welty to be the first Massey lecturer.

Welty was asked to discuss her own beginnings as a writer in the lectures, Donald said, because although she is best known for her works of fiction, the selection committee felt that listeners would enjoy hearing her describe her own literary impetus most.

Even though Longfellow Hall overflowed with avid listeners yesterday, Monday, and Wednesday, Welty preferred to deliver her talks from the smaller lecture room because of the intimacy she could develop with her listeners.

Greatest Honors

Welty said Monday that being asked to give the Massey lectures series was "one of the greatest honors of my life." She added that "I've never written about myself before, anyone."

In a separate interview yesterday, Welty said she been working on the lectures for more than a year, adding that she had to condense much of them because of time constraints. Welty's lectures will be published is their entirely by the Harvard University Press next spring, Donald said.

In her first lecture, entitled "Listening," Welty described the awakening of her literary sensibilities through listening to gossip. Wednesday, in her lecture "Learning to See," Welty discussed how she began to see things and try to capture them in her short stories. And in her final lecture yesterday Welty read from several of her short stories, explaining the persons within each tale.

"A fiction writer is a contemplator of the unknown territory in human beings," Welty said during yesterday's lecture, after which she received an extended standing ovation.

Welty's novels include "The Robber Bridegroom," "Delta Wedding," and "Losing Battles." Her short fiction, which originally appeared in several literary magazines were recently published in the "Collected Works of Eudora Welty."

Vincent Scully, Trumbull Professor of the History of Art at Yale, will be next year's lecturer.