Why couldn't The New Yorker recognize the unique sensibility of Carson McCullers

The first (and only, I think) 3 stories that Carson McCullers sold to The New Yorker, from the 1930s when she was in her early 20s, are - actually - atypical of McCullers's work. It was as if, then as now, The New Yorker was unwilling to take a chance on her when she was unpublished but was all over her once she became a phenom sensation with The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. The stories they took - Jockey, Lady Ismeralda (?) and the King of Finland, and Correspondence - really differ from the apprentice work that was published either late in McCullers's life or posthumously (and is now in her "Collected Stories"): for one thing, the first two stories are not about the struggles of precocious misfit kids but are about adults; they're not set in the South, but one is in Saratoga (racing season) and the other at a college in N.J. Correspondence is about a young woman, but again differs from earlier McCullers in that it's an experiment (rather tepid, but still) in form - a story in (unanswered) letters. If we had only these 3 to go on, McCullers's reputation would - well, it would not exist. The New Yorker, in those days, was not really willing or able to recognize what was special and even unique in McCullers's sensibility; but, she did find receptive publishers later and throughout her short life.