The Member of the Wedding

The Member of the Wedding
First edition
AuthorCarson McCullers
Cover artistIsaac Haft
LanguageEnglish
PublisherHoughton Mifflin Company
Publication date
1946
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint
Pages176 pp (paperback)
OCLC57134632

The Member of the Wedding is a 1946 novel by Southern writer Carson McCullers.[1] It took McCullers five years to complete, although she interrupted the work for a few months to write the novella The Ballad of the Sad Café.[2]

In a letter to her husband Reeves McCullers, she explained that the novel was "one of those works that the least slip can ruin. It must be beautifully done. For like a poem there is not much excuse for it otherwise."[3]

She originally planned to write a story about a girl who is in love with her piano teacher, but she had what she called "a divine spark: "Suddenly I said: Frankie is in love with her brother and the bride.... The illumination focused the whole book."[4]

  1. ^ Banes, Louise Parks (July 8, 1946). "The Reading Hour". The Bakersfield Californian.
  2. ^ McDowell, Margaret B. Carson McCullers, Boston, 1980.
  3. ^ quoted in Carson McCullers: A Life, Josyane Savigneau, London, 2001.
  4. ^ Letter to Tennessee Williams, quoted by Josyane Savigneau,Carson McCullers: A Life.