Eudora Welty was born in Jackson, Mississippi on April 13, 1909. She was the oldest of three children and the only girl of a very close-knit family. Her father, Christian Webb Welty, was an Ohio native who worked for an insurance company. Her mother, Mary Chestina Welty, had been a schoolteacher in West Virginia. Welty’s mother, being a schoolteacher, loved to read and influenced Welty to read at a young age. In her biography, Welty tells about her earliest memories of her parents reading to her and to each other at night. She was always surrounded by books and was always reading. Her love of reading led her to graduate high school and further her education, which most girls during this time…