Sara Haardt's character sketches, short stories, and essays appeared regularly in leading literary and popular magazines of the 1920s and 1930s. Southern Souvenirs brings together both prize-winning and previously unpublished work, reintroduces Haardt to scholar and general reader alike, and restores her place in the pantheon of southern letters.Although Haardt struggled with poor health throughout her life, she published widely in such magazines and journals as The Reviewer, Mencken's The Smart Set, Atlantic Monthly, Bookman, and Harper's Bazaar before her untimely death from tuberculosis in 1935. Her story "Absolutely Perfect" was among the O. Henry Prize stories for 1933, "Little White Girl" was included in Best Short Stories of 1935. Haardt's works richly evoke the landscapes and family life of the early 20th-century South and paint trenchant portraits of its girls and women. These achievements, along with Haardt's perpetual conflict with her own southernness, lead Henley to place Haardt as a precursor to such writers as Carson McCullers, Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, and, more recently, Alice Walker and Lee Smith.