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Carson McCullers (February 19, 1917 – September 29, 1967) was an American novelist, short story writer, playwright, essayist, and poet. Her first novel, ''The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter'', explores the spiritual isolation of misfits and outcasts in a small town of the U.S. South. Her other novels have similar themes and most are set in the deep South. McCullers’ oeuvre is often described as Southern Gothic and indicative of her southern roots. However, McCullers penned all of her work after leaving the South, and critics also describe her writing and eccentric characters as universal in scope. Her stories have been adapted to stage and film. A stagework of her novel ''The Member of the Wedding'' (1946), which captures a young girl's feelings at her brother's wedding, made a successful Broadway run in 1950–51. ==Early life and education== She was born Lula Carson Smith in Columbus, Georgia in 1917. Her mother’s grandfather was a plantation owner and Confederate war hero. Her father was a watchmaker and jeweler of French Huguenot descent. From the age of ten she took piano lessons; when she was fifteen her father gave her a typewriter to encourage her story writing. Smith graduated from Columbus High School. In September 1934, at age 17, she left home on a steamship bound for New York City, planning to study piano at the Juilliard School of Music. After falling ill with rheumatic fever she returned to Columbus to recuperate, and she changed her mind about studying music. Returning to New York she worked in menial jobs while pursuing a writing career; she attended night classes at Columbia University and studied creative writing under the Texas writer Dorothy Scarborough and with Sylvia Chatfield Bates at Washington Square College of New York University. In 1936 she published her first work. "Wunderkind", an autobiographical piece that Bates admired, depicted a music prodigy's adolescent insecurity and losses. It first appeared in ''Story'' magazine and is collected in ''The Ballad of the Sad Cafe.'' Carson's childhood home in Columbus, Georgia is now owned by the local Columbus State University, and is the central location of the university's Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians.〔http://mccullerscenter.org/〕 The center is dedicated to preserving the legacy of Carson McCullers; to nurturing American writers and musicians; to educating young people; and to fostering the literary and musical life of Columbus, the State of Georgia, and the American South. To that end, the Center operates a museum in the Smith-McCullers' home, presents extensive educational and cultural programs for the community, maintains an ever-growing archive of materials related to the life and work of McCullers, and offers fellowships for writers and composers who live for periods of time in the Smith-McCullers home in Columbus. While the center operates out of the Smith-McCullers' home, the writer's childhood home and museum is open to the public. In 1944, when Carson's father died, her mother left Columbus and moved to Nyack, New York, where she bought Carson's fame Nyack home. Carson lived with her mother and sister off and on in this house for a number of years, eventually buying the house from her mother. Carson was living in this house when she died, in 1967. In December 2006 the McCullers house in Nyack was added to the National Register of Historic Places.〔http://www.nps.gov/nr/〕 Carson's physician and long time friend, Dr. Mary E. Mercer, bequeathed the home in Nyack to Columbus State University's Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians, the same center that owns and operates out of Carson's childhood home in Columbus, Georgia.〔http://mccullerscenter.org/nyack.php〕 After Dr. Mercer's passing in late April 2013, the McCullers Center inherited not only the house but also many Carson-related artifacts and documents that shed light on the last ten years of Carson's life. Due to the generosity of Dr. Mercer, CSU is one of the very few universities to own two homes by a single author and now houses the world's most extensive research collection on Carson. An endowment in Dr. Mercer's name also has been created to continue these efforts in the curation and preservation of Carson's legacy. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Carson McCullers」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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