In its Summer 2004 issue, Georgia State University's Eudora Welty Newsletter published "Magic," a Welty short story out of print since 1936. It was only the third story that the young writer was able to place, appearing in an obscure Ohio literary magazine, Manuscript, shortly after "Death of a Traveling Salesman," one of Welty's most reprinted stories, also appeared there. "Magic," however, has never reached print again until now.

"Magic" follows two would-be sweethearts as they proceed recklessly to a nighttime tryst in Jackson, Mississippi's Greenwood Cemetery, the only place they can be alone in the dark. The story is by turns comic, poignant, and gothic, as the subject matter and the setting suggest. The eager lovers are a telegram delivery boy and a shy girl who studies shorthand. It is she who employs her meager and ambiguous "magic" for an evening that concludes strangely. Welty allows her characters' untagged dialogue to convey both plot and character, as she would do with great success in stories like "Petrified Man," but in "Magic" she reproduces a slangy youthful dialect different from any she used before or ever again in her fiction.

An afterword by Pearl McHaney, Eudora Welty Newsletter editor, discusses the story's origins, its publication history, and Welty's motives for never including the piece in any of her short story collections. Fascinating elements of the material culture context of the story include, but are not limited to, a carnival give-away Kewpie Doll, Sonny Clapp's 1927 song "Girl of My Dreams," and the eponymous love philter "Magic," sent for from Kansas City with a dime and "a coupon cut from a movie magazine."

The EWN summer issue also contains essays on Welty's sojourn in San Francisco in 1947 and her writing there and an account of Segovia's concert in San Francisco during that time. The "Magic" issue of EWN also features a tribute to Welty by Reynolds Price and an essay on Welty's photograph Home by Dark/Yalabousha County/1936 that appears on jacket designs of two novels about slavery.

To help meet the National Endowment for the Humanities Challenge Grant for programming at the Eudora Welty House Museum, described in the Summer 2004 Southern Register, one hundred nonsubscriber copies of this EWN "Magic" issue are reserved at $25 each, including mailing. Checks for the "Magic" issue should be made out to The Eudora Welty Foundation and sent to Eudora Welty Newsletter, Department of English, Georgia State University, P.O. Box 3970, Atlanta, GA 30302-3970. For details, e-mail ewn@langate.gsu or visit the EWN Web site (www.gsu.edu/~wwwewn/).