Carson McCullers
Town of Orangetown, Rockland County, New York
Marker Inscription
Carson McCullers 1917 – 1967 Carson McCullers, writer and dramatist, made this house her home from 1945 to her death on September 29, 1967. Born in Columbus, Ga., on February 19, 1917, she achieved fame with The Heart is a Lonely Hunter 1940 and Reflections in a Golden Eye 1941. In this house she completed The Member of the Wedding 1946, The Ballad of the Sad Café 1951, Clock Without Hands 1961, and other plays, short stories, poetry and autobiographical works. “They are the we of me.”
Erected by Historical Society of Rockland County
The Story
The Georgia-born writer Carson McCullers (1917–1967) made this house her home from 1945 until her death, working here despite chronic illness. Having won early fame with The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter and Reflections in a Golden Eye, she completed The Member of the Wedding, The Ballad of the Sad Café, and much else within these walls. Her fiction gave voice to loneliness, longing, and the outsiders of the American South.
Why it matters
It honors a major woman of Southern letters whose tender portraits of isolation and difference secured her a lasting place in American literature.
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