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Preferred Citation

Joan Williams Papers, MSS 9394, box number, folder number, folder title, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia.

Processing Information

The Joan Williams Papers are comprised of the following gifts and purchases, 1970−2004: MSS 9394, MSS 9394-a, MSS 9394-c, MSS 9394-d, MSS 9394-e, MSS 9394-f, MSS 9394-g, MSS 9394-h, and MSS 10224-a. Prior to the creation of this finding aid, the Joan Williams Papers were accessed through eight separate MARC records in Virgo based on these groupings by accession number. To help facilitate continued access to historic citations referencing past MARC records, the above original accession numbers have been kept at the file level and are listed at the end of each folder title.

The materials in this collection have no discernible original order, and archival arrangement and description has been imposed by the archivist. Brackets have been used to indicate where undated materials have been dated by the archivist based on contextual or other evidence.

Biographical / Historical

Joan Williams (1928−2004) was born on September 26, 1928, in Memphis, Tennessee, as the only child of Maud Moore Williams (1903−1997) and Priestly Howard "P. H." Williams (1895−1955). She attended the Miss Hutchison School for Girls in Memphis and earned her bachelor's degree from Bard College in 1950. In the summer of 1949, Williams's writing career began in earnest when she won the Mademoiselle College Fiction Prize for her short story, "Rain Later." She went on to publish a number of works, including the novels The Morning and the Evening (1961), Old Powder Man (1966), The Wintering (1971), County Woman (1982), and Pay the Piper (1988). She also published short stories, including the collected volume Pariah and Other Stories (1983). In the later part of Williams's life, she wrote in the short story and nonfiction genres; these works were posthumously brought together in Lisa C. Hickman's Remembering: Joan Williams's Uncollected Pieces (New York: Open Road Distribution, 2015).

Williams was inspired to write stories set in the rural Mississippi countryside she often visited, particularly Tate County, "where her maternal grandmother, Arvenia Moore, and other relatives lived" ( Mississippi Encyclopedia ). In Williams's own words, "While I grew up in Memphis, it … [was] never … my bent to write about city life. It was the [southern] landscape that sparked me: country roads, dust rising, farming talk…. quiet stories about quiet people" ("Joan Williams: Struggling Fiction Writer"). Williams, a white woman, also noted, "The years of the civil rights movement were rewarding years for me, since I could sit in a rural store and listen to people talk about what was passing away that had been in place for a hundred years." ("Joan Williams: Struggling Fiction Writer").

Williams received national recognition for her contributions to southern literature during her lifetime. Her debut novel The Morning and the Evening earned widespread critical acclaim when it was published in 1961. In 1962, she received the John P. Marquand First Novel Award from the Book-of-the-Month Club and was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction. Also in 1962, Williams received the Arts and Letters Award in Literature from the National Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1988, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for fiction writing.

Williams's achievements over the course of her literary career have often been unfairly conflated with and overshadowed by her association with William Faulkner (1897−1962). The two authors of southern literature had a complex relationship marked by the extreme power imbalance of Faulkner's fame and literary success and Williams's literary ambitions and youth. She was twenty years old, and Faulkner was fifty-one and married when they met in 1949 and started a relationship. From the beginning, Faulkner pressured Williams for a sexual relationship, but Williams wanted friendship and mentorship, a reality which ended any sustainable romantic relationship by 1953 (Hickman, William Faulkner and Joan Williams , p. 9−11). In 1954, Williams married her contemporary, the sportswriter and editor Ezra Bowen, and they had two sons. However, she and Faulkner continued to see each other and exchange letters until his death in 1962.

After divorcing Bowen in 1970, Williams was subsequently married to John Fargason from 1970 to 1981. She lived in partnership with Atlantic editor Seymour Lawrence from 1984 until his death in 1994. Williams died on April 11, 2004.

Sources

Hickman, Lisa C. "Joan Williams (1928−2004), Writer." Mississippi Encyclopedia . July 11, 2017. https://mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/joan-williams/.

Hickman, Lisa C. "Tiger Lady: On Joan Williams," Los Angeles Review of Books . December 11, 2011. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/tiger-lady-on-joan-williams/#!.

Hickman, Lisa C. William Faulkner and Joan Williams: The Romance of Two Writers . Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company, Inc., 2006. [Call Number: PS3511 .A86Z4 .H485 W5 2006]

Mississippi Writers and Musicians . n.d. "Joan Williams," Accessed August 1, 2024. https://www.mswritersandmusicians.com/mississippi-writers/joan-williams.

Wikipedia . n.d. "Joan Williams (author)." Accessed August 1, 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Williams_(author).

Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. n.d. "Joan Williams." Accessed August 2, 2024. https://www.gf.org/fellows/joan-williams/.

National Book Foundation. n.d. "The Morning and the Evening: Finalist, National Book Awards 1962 for Fiction, Joan Williams." Accessed August 2, 2024. https://www.nationalbook.org/books/the-morning-and-the-evening/.

Williams, Joan. "Joan Williams: Struggling Fiction Writer." Interview by Patrick H. Samway. America , December 31, 1988: 544−545 and 549. [Call Number: PS3573 .I4494 Z678 1988]

Scope and Contents

The Joan Williams Papers (1950-1988; 7 cft) primarily contains materials (e.g., manuscripts, typescripts, setting copy, and galley proofs) relating to Williams's publications County Woman , The Morning and Evening , Pariah , Pay the Piper , Old Powder Man , and The Wintering . This collection also includes correspondence as well as a transcript of an interview Williams conducted with Mississippi Educational Television.

Arrangement

The Joan Williams papers have been arranged in three series: Series I: Works (1961−1988; 6.68 cft); Series II: Correspondence (1950−1988; 0.28 cft); and Series III: Press (undated; 0.04 cft).

Related Material

Correspondence from William Faulkner to Joan Williams (MSS 9394) is part of the William Faulkner Collection (MSS 16807; Series II: Correspondence).

Subjects and Indexing Terms

• American fiction--20th Century
• American literature--Southern States
• Williams, Joan, 1928-2004
• Women authors, American
• Women authors, White