Virginia Spencer Carr's The Lonely Hunter: Thirty-Eight Years Later

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Notes

¹Other short biographical studies by Dale Edmonds (1969), Lawrence Graver (1969), Richard Cook (1975), and Margaret McDowell (1980) were for literature and life series.

²Carr notes that the manuscript autobiography was in the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center (U. Texas, Austin) but does not draw from it. Carlos Dews transcribed and researched it for his dissertation (1994) and steered Savigneau to it as well as to the unpublished letters of Reeves McCullers. Between Savigneau's biography in French (1995) and the English translation (2001), Dews published Illumination and Night Glare and Reeves's letters (1999). Carr used Reeves's letters but was limited to summarizing from them.

Reeves had desired to be a writer himself. He and McCullers had an agreement that they would take turns as writers in their early first marriage, and when that did not happen, Reeves blamed his low self-esteem and his alcoholism on living in Carson's shadow. Savigneau challenges any lingering speculation that he is to be credited with her first two works. Though he had opportunities later to write himself, he failed to produce. Ultimately, Reeves exists as a writer only through his communications to McCullers.