Elizabeth Spencer: Novels & Stories (LOA #344): The Voice at the Back Door / The Light in the Piazza / Knights and Dragons / Stories (Library of America)

On her centennial, a contemporary of Flannery O’Connor and Harper Lee joins the Library of America with a volume that restores to print her searing novel about the late Jim Crow South Elizabeth Spencer (1921-2019) was a major figure of the Southern Renaissance, though today her many books and stories are scattered or out of print. This Library of America volume brings together the very best of her writing—three novels and nineteen stories—from a career spanning more than six decades. The Voice at the Back Door (1957), greeted by The New Yorker as "a practically perfect novel" and here restored to print, portrays small-town life in Mississippi during the late Jim Crow era and the self-interest and hatred that kept injustice firmly in place. Published two years after the Emmett Till lynching, it captures the spitting vehemence of its white characters' speech and may have been proven too potentially controversial for the Pulitzer board (which awarded no prize in 1957). Also included in this volume are The Light in the Piazza (1960), Spencer's most famous work, a deftly poignant comedy about Americans abroad that was adapted to the screen by Guy Green; and a second superb Italian novella, Knights and Dragons (1965), reminiscent of Henry James's novels in its atmosphere, interiority, and concern with transplanted Americans. Spencer excelled in the short story form and this volume presents a career-spanning selection by editor Michael Gorra that ranges from the early "First Dark" (1959), a kind of ghost story about a spectral oversized house in a Southern town, to the valedictory "The Wedding Visitor" (2013), about the refusal to let the all-enveloping world of place, family, and childhood define one's adult life. Spencer's special focus was families, and few writers have so brilliantly plumbed the passions that unite them and the inner upheavals that can tear them apart. Elizabeth Spencer has been called a national treasure (Richard Bausch) and a writer one puts on the permanent shelf (James Dickey). Often linked with fellow Mississippians William Faulkner and Eudora Weltythe latter once remarked that Spencer knows the small, Southern, backwoods hilltown down to the boneshe also crafted nuanced portrayals of expatriate Americans in Europe that invite comparison to Henry James. This Library of America volume gathers the best writing from a career that spanned six decades: three novels and nineteen stories that reveal as never before the full range and stature of her accomplishments. The Voice at the Back Door (1956) is a shrewd and sensitive look at racial politics in a quiet Mississippi town during the late Jim Crow era, a novel that anticipates Harper Lees To Kill a Mockingbird . The breakneck plot is set in motion when Duncan Harper, a shopkeeper and former football star more open-minded than anyone suspects, accepts the job of sheriff, pushing the town of Lacey toward crisis. The judges for the Pulitzer Prize unanimously recommended Spencers novel for the award in fiction, but the Pulitzer board declined to make an award that year, perhaps for fear that Spencers racial subject matter was too incendiary for the national climate at the time. The two years that Spencer spent in Italy on a Guggenheim Fellowship inspired The Light in the Piazza (1960), her most famous work, adapted for the screen by Guy Green and into a Tony Awardwinning musical by Adam Guettel and Craig Lucas. Set in Florence and permeated by the citys atmosphere and light, it is a comic, deft, and poignant novel about a wealthy American woman whose attempt to marry her beautiful daughter to a handsome young Florentine conceals a wrenching secret. It is joined here by Knights and Dragons (1965), described by Spencer as a dark companion to The Light in the Piazza , in which an American woman, haunted by the specter of her domineering ex-husband, travels to Rome in search of a new life. Spencer was a prolific and prodigiously talented short story writer. The selection presented here demonstrates her mastery of the form, ranging from the early, ghostly First Dark (1959), a gothic tale about a history-haunted love affair in a small southern town, to the valedictory The Wedding Visitor (2013), about one mans refusal to let the all-enveloping world of place, family, and childhood define his adult life. "Over the course of a career that spanned six decades, the southern novelist and short story writer Elizabeth Spencer established herself as one of the finest literary artists of a generation that included Flannery O'Connor, Carson McCullers, and Eudora Welty. This definitive volume brings together three remarkable novels: The Voice at the Back Door, her powerful masterpiece about racial politics in the world of Jim Crow Mississippi; the beloved classic The Light in the Piazza, a celebration of the possibilities of love set amidst the splendors of Florence; and its "dark companion," Knights and Dragons, about a woman working in Rome who is obsessed with the enigmatic specter of her ex-husband. A selection of nineteen stories reveals Spencer, as Richard Ford writes, as "a rare and true master" of the form." Page 4 of cover. "Over the course of a career that spanned six decades, the southern novelist and short story writer Elizabeth Spencer established herself as one of the finest literary artists of a generation that included Flannery O'Connor, Carson McCullers, and Eudora Welty. This definitive volume brings together three remarkable novels: The Voice at the Back Door, her powerful masterpiece about racial politics in the world of Jim Crow Mississippi; the beloved classic The Light in the Piazza, a celebration of the possibilities of love set amidst the splendors of Florence; and its 'dark companion,' Knights and Dragons, about a woman working in Rome who is obsessed with the enigmatic specter of her ex-husband. A selection of nineteen stories reveals Spencer, as Richard Ford writes, as 'a rare and true master' of the form."--Dust jacket