Few writers have expressed the search for love and the need for human understanding with such power and poetic sensibility as Carson McCullers. Th Mortgaged Heart contains some of the landmarks in the literary careers that would see her become one of the twentieth century’s great American writers- ‘Wunderkind’, her first published story, ‘The Mute’, her outline of what was to become her great first novel The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, as well as her haunting poetry and essays and articles on subjects ranging from her neighbourhood of Brooklyn to life in wartime, from Christmas to the art of writing. ‘A kind of literary biography… one sees the style and perception developing and expressing a unique sensibility’ - Paul Theroux, Guardian