The Robber Bridegroom (Paperback)

by Eudora Welty (Author) "It was the close of day when a boat touched Rodney's Landing on the Mississippi River and Clement Musgrove, an innocent planter, with a bag..." (more)
Key Phrases: little dirk, mail rider, indigo field, Little Harp, Jamie Lockhart, Mike Fink (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Legendary figures of Mississippi’s past-flatboatman Mike Fink and the dreaded Harp brothers-mingle with characters from Eudora Welty’s own imagination in an exuberant fantasy set along the Natchez Trace. Berry-stained bandit of the woods Jamie Lockhart steals Rosamond, the beautiful daughter of pioneer planter Clement Musgrove, to set in motion this frontier fairy tale. “For all her wild, rich fancy, Welty writes prose that is as disciplined as it is beautiful” (New Yorker).

About the Author
Welty was born in Jackson, Mississippi, and lived a significant portion of her life in the city's Belhaven neighborhood, where her home has been preserved. She was educated at the Mississippi State College for Women (now called Mississippi University for Women), the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Columbia Business School. While at Columbia University, where she was the captain of the women's polo team, Welty was a regular at Romany Marie's café in 1930.[1] During the 1930s, Welty worked as a photographer for the Works Progress Administration, a job that sent her all over the state of Mississippi photographing people from all economic and social classes. Collections of her photographs are One Time, One Place and Photographs. The headstone of Eudora Welty at Greenwood Cemetery in Jackson, Mississippi.Welty's true love was literature, not photography, and she soon devoted her energy to writing fiction. Her first short story, "Death of a Traveling Salesman," appeared in 1936. Her work attracted the attention of Katherine Anne Porter, who became a mentor to her and wrote the foreword to Welty's first collection of short stories, A Curtain of Green, in 1941. The book immediately established Welty as one of American literature's leading lights and featured the legendary and oft-anthologized stories "Why I Live at the P.O.," "Petrified Man," and "A Worn Path." Her novel, The Optimist's Daughter, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. In 1992, Welty was awarded the Rea Award for the Short Story for her lifetime contributions to the American short story, and was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, founded in 1987. In her later life, she lived near Belhaven College in Jackson, Mississippi, where, despite her fame, she was still a common sight among the people of her hometown. Eudora Welty died of pneumonia in Jackson, Mississippi, at the age of 92, and is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Jackson.

Product Details

• Paperback: 185 pages
• Publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; 1st edition (November 8, 1978)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156768070
• ISBN-13: 978-0156768078
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #413,200 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A very enjoyable read...., November 10, 1999

By A Customer

A beautifully written blend of fairy tale imagery, evocative prose, and Southern folklore. Welty's mastery of colloquial speech and her rich descriptions of the Natchez wilderness are the high points in my mind. A short novel with a somewhat lively plot, diligent readers shouldn't have a problem finishing this one off in one or two sittings. Overall, I found it to be a very promising first novel by the Pulitzer Prize winning author.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A warped fairy tale, April 13, 2004

By	Jessica Cluess (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Eudora Welty borrowed from the old Brothers Grimm fairy tale 'The Robber Bridegroom' to create this story that is part fairy tale, part historical fantasy, and very strange. Instead of old Europe, the action takes place in the southern United States. The old characters are all there: the innocent daughter, the merchant father, the irascible thief who becomes the 'bridegroom', and some new people have been added. A wicked stepmother, a boy named Goat, and an Indian tribe are just a few of the extras.

Apparently some of the characters, like Mike Fink and the Harp brothers, were real people, or at least were part of American folklore. Welty combines old world and new world fairy tales to create something completely unique. If you know the story of the Robber Bridgroom, you'll see how Welty has slyly snuck in very subtle similarities (the bird in the cage), and you'll be astonished at how much the ending was changed from the original story.

The book moves with rapid speed through larger than life situations. The Indians cooked and ate the merchant's family and he and his daughter escaped, THEN he married the evil Salome, THEN some guy tried to kill him while he slept with his bag of gold, THEN Lockhart carried his daughter away naked, THEN... It becomes almost too frantic, and you might need to go back a few pages now and again to make sure you didn't miss something. It's probably not the best introduction to Welty, but it's one of her most colorful works. For an elegantly written, surrealist fairy tale, you can't do much better than this.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Cupid and Psyche meets the American Tall Tale, May 16, 2004

By	Gypsi Phillips Bates "bilbiophile" (Knoxville, TN, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Welty's first published novel is a retelling of Psyche and Cupid, with a decidedly American twist. Instead of turning the Greek myth into a fairy tale, she's created a delightfully unbelievable, far-fetched and bizarre "tall tale".

Many of the elements of a fairy tale are there--the wicked stepmother, the beautiful heroine, the naive and loving father, the handsome hero--but these are overshadowed by tall tale traits such as the superb stretching-of-the-truth skills by nearly everyone encountered from the mail rider who was swallowed by a crocodile to our heroine, Rosamond, who can't tell a truth to save her life.

The story takes place along the Natchez Trace in Mississippi with "Red Indians", robbers and a few famous American tall tale characters filling up the bad guy roster--with the hero, Jamie, switching sides regularly. Rosamond's father Clement Musgrove is a wealthy planter who meets Jamie at an inn and unwittingly brings his disruptive presence into Musgrove family.

Many deaths, lies, misunderstandings and berry stains later, Rosamond and Jamie do live happily ever after. . . and Rosamond even starts telling the truth. . . well mostly the truth, "it was all true but the blue canopy".

This fanciful tale is a well-executed, superbly written, pleasant read and it's only afterwards that one realizes that Welty added a bit of acid to this pleasurable brew.