| Elizabeth Spencer | |
| Birth Date: | 19 July 1921 |
| Birth Place: | Carrollton, Mississippi, U.S. |
| Death Place: | Chapel Hill, North Carolina, U.S. |
| Education: | Belhaven University (BA) Vanderbilt University (MA) |
Elizabeth Spencer (July 19, 1921 – December 22, 2019)[1] was an American writer. Spencer's first novel, Fire in the Morning, was published in 1948.[2] She wrote a total of nine novels, seven collections of short stories, a memoir (Landscapes of the Heart, 1998), and a play (For Lease or Sale, 1989). 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 five-time recipient of the O. Henry Award for short fiction.[3]
Spencer's themes relate to tension between the individual and the group, and deal with how family or community ties support but also bind the individual's identity. She writes about this as it concerns the inner lives of her female characters, many of whom struggle to establish a fruitful life independent of society's narrow restrictions.[4]
Born in Carrollton, Mississippi, Spencer was valedictorian of her graduating class at J. Z. George High School. She earned her BA at Belhaven College in Jackson, Mississippi and a master's in literature at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee in 1943. At Vanderbilt, Spencer studied with Donald Davidson.[5]
Spencer taught at the junior college level at Northwest Mississippi Community College in Senatobia, Mississippi for two years, then accepted a job with the Nashville Tennessean, but she soon returned to teaching, this time at the University of Mississippi in Oxford. In 1953, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship[6] and left Mississippi to live in Italy and pursue writing full-time.
Her third novel, begun in Florence, Italy, The Voice at the Back Door, was the finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1957. The prize ultimately wasn't awarded that year.[5]
After her first three novels set in Mississippi, Spencer's career foundered for a while, for she was seen as a "Southern woman" writer, and not a literary figure. In 1981 Spencer published her collected Stories, with a foreword by Eudora Welty, and her standing was reestablished among critics, who took another look at her contributions.[7]
While in Italy, she met and married John Rusher of Cornwall, England. The couple moved to Montreal, Quebec in 1956, where they remained until moving to Chapel Hill, North Carolina in 1986. She taught creative writing at Concordia University in Montreal, and at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill until her retirement. Rusher died in 1998, and Spencer continued to live in her Chapel Hill home until her death on 22 December 2019.[8]
Spencer, through her mother's family, was a cousin of United States senator John McCain.[8]
| Title | Publication | Collected in |
|---|---|---|
| "Pilgrimage" | Virginia Quarterly Review (Summer 1950) | - |
| "The Little Brown Girl" | The New Yorker (July 20, 1957) | Ship Island |
| "The Eclipse" | The New Yorker (July 12, 1958) | The Stories of Elizabeth Spencer |
| "First Dark" | The New Yorker (June 20, 1959) | Ship Island |
| "A Southern Landscape" | The New Yorker (March 26, 1960) | |
| "The Light in the Piazza" | The New Yorker (June 18, 1960) | The Light in the Piazza |
| "Moon Rocket" | McCall's (October 1960) | The Stories of Elizabeth Spencer |
| "The White Azalea" | Texas Quarterly (Winter 1961) | Ship Island |
| "A Beautiful Day for the Wedding" | Redbook (September 1962) | - |
| "The Atwater Fiancee" | The Montrealer (September 1963) | - |
| "The Visit" | Prairie Schooner (Summer 1964) | Ship Island |
| "The Fishing Lake" | The New Yorker (August 29, 1964) | |
| "Ship Island" | The New Yorker (September 12, 1964) | |
| "The Adult Holiday" | The New Yorker (June 12, 1965) | The Stories of Elizabeth Spencer |
| "Knights & Dragons" | Redbook (July 1965) | |
| "The Pincian Gate" | The New Yorker (April 16, 1966) | |
| "The Absence" | The New Yorker (September 10, 1966) | |
| "The Bufords" aka "Those Bufords" | McCall's (January 1967) | |
| "A Bad Cold" | The New Yorker (May 27, 1967) | |
| "On the Gulf" | Delta Review (February 1968) | |
| "Judith Kane" | Ship Island (1968) | Ship Island |
| "Wisteria" | ||
| "The Day Before" | ||
| "Sharon" | The New Yorker (May 9, 1970) | The Stories of Elizabeth Spencer |
| "Presents" | Shenandoah (Winter 1971) | |
| "The Finder" | The New Yorker (January 23, 1971) | |
| "Instrument of Destruction" | Mississippi Review (1972) | |
| "A Kiss at the Door" | The Southern Review (Summer 1972) | |
| "The Name of the Game" | McCall's (September 1972) | - |
| "A Christian Education" | The Atlantic (March 1974) | The Stories of Elizabeth Spencer |
| "Mr. McMillan" | The Southern Review (Winter 1975) | |
| "Prelude to a Parking Lot" | The Southern Review (Summer 1976) | |
| "I, Maureen" | New Canadian Stories (1976) | |
| "Port of Embarkation" | The Atlantic (January 1977) | |
| "Indian Summer" | Southern Review (Summer 1978) | |
| "The Girl Who Loved Horses" | Ontario Review (Spring/Summer 1979) | |
| "The Search" | Chatelaine (April 1979) | |
| "Go South in Winter" | Journal of Canadian Fiction 23 (1979) | |
| "Jean-Pierre" | The New Yorker (August 17, 1981) | Jack of Diamonds |
| "The Cousins" | The Southern Review (Spring 1985) | |
| "Jack of Diamonds" | The Kenyon Review (Summer 1986) | |
| "The Business Venture" | The Southern Review (Spring 1987) | |
| "The Skater" | North American Review (June 1988) | |
| "The Legacy" | The Legacy, Mud Puppy Press (1988) | On the Gulf |
| "A Fugitive's Wife" | On the Gulf (1991) | |
| "The Weekend Travelers" | Story (Winter 1994) | The Southern Woman |
| "The Runaways" | Antaeus (Spring 1994) | |
| "The Master of Shongalo" | The Southern Review (Winter 1995) | |
| "The Everlasting Light" | Raleigh News & Observer (December 20, 1998) | Starting Over |
| "Owl" | Nightshade, ed. Robert Phillips (1999) | The Southern Woman |
| "First Child" | The Southern Review (Spring 2000) | |
| "The Boy in the Tree" | The Southern Review (Summer 2004) | Starting Over |
| "Sightings" | The Hudson Review (July 2008) | |
| "Return Trip" | (Spring 2009) | |
| "Rising Tide" | Oxford American (July 2010) | |
| "Christmas Longings" | Our State (December 2012) | |
| "Blackie" | Epoch (2012) | |
| "On the Hill" | Five Points (February 2013) | |
| "The Wedding Visitor" | Zyzzyva (July 2013) | |