Flannery O'Connor

Mary Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) published two novels and two story collections in a career cut short by lupus at age thirty-nine. That body of work — small, intense, and unlike anything else in American literature — has only grown in stature since her death. Her fiction combines the social precision of a realist, the grotesque invention of a fabulist, and the theological seriousness of a medieval mystic, all delivered in prose of jarring comic force.

Life and Career

O’Connor was born in Savannah, Georgia, the only child of Edward and Regina O’Connor. Her father, a real estate dealer, was diagnosed with systemic lupus erythematosus when Flannery was twelve; he died in 1941, when she was fifteen. The disease would claim her, too, though she did not learn of her own diagnosis until 1952.

She was educated at Georgia State College for Women in Milledgeville (now Georgia College), where she contributed cartoons and stories to the college literary magazine, and then at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (1945–1947), where she studied under Paul Engle and Andrew Lytle. Iowa was the making of her: she arrived as a gifted but provincial writer from the deep South and left as a disciplined artist with a professional network that included Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Hardwick, and Jean Stafford.

After Iowa, O’Connor lived briefly at Yaddo, the artists’ colony in Saratoga Springs, and then with the Fitzgeralds — Robert and Sally — in Connecticut, where she completed the first draft of Wise Blood. In December 1950, travelling home to Georgia for Christmas, she suffered a severe lupus attack. She would spend the remaining fourteen years of her life at Andalusia, the family dairy farm outside Milledgeville, living with her mother, raising peacocks, writing in the mornings, and conducting a vast correspondence.

Wise Blood was published by Harcourt, Brace in 1952. A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories followed in 1955. Her second novel, The Violent Bear It Away, appeared in 1960. Her final story collection, Everything That Rises Must Converge, was published posthumously in 1965. She died at Baldwin County Hospital on 3 August 1964, having completed several of the stories in the final collection from her hospital bed.

Major Works and Themes

O’Connor’s fiction is driven by an uncompromising Catholic theology — specifically, the operation of grace in a fallen world. Her characters are backwoods preachers, travelling salesmen, genteel ladies with racial prejudices, juvenile delinquents, and con artists, all of whom encounter moments of violent revelation that O’Connor understood as divine intervention. The violence is never gratuitous: it is the instrument by which complacent souls are broken open to the possibility of redemption.

Wise Blood (1952) follows Hazel Motes, a discharged soldier who founds the “Church Without Christ” in a unnamed Southern city, only to find himself incapable of escaping the Jesus he denies. The novel is simultaneously a savage comedy, a religious allegory, and a portrait of post-war Southern dislocation. It baffled reviewers on publication; O’Connor herself called it “a comic novel about a Christian malgré lui.”

The short stories are where O’Connor’s art reaches its highest pitch. “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” (1953) — in which a family on a road trip encounters an escaped convict called The Misfit — is perhaps the most anthologized American short story of the century. Its final scene, in which the grandmother reaches out to The Misfit in a gesture of grace at the moment of her murder, is a touchstone of O’Connor’s theological vision. “Good Country People,” “The Life You Save May Be Your Own,” “Everything That Rises Must Converge,” and “Revelation” are equally masterful.

The Violent Bear It Away (1960) returns to the territory of Wise Blood: a young man’s resistance to his prophetic calling, set against the landscape of rural Georgia. It is darker and more assured than the first novel, and many readers consider it the greater achievement.

Critical Reception and Legacy

O’Connor was respected but far from famous in her lifetime. Print runs were small — Wise Blood sold perhaps 3,000 copies — and the Southern Gothic label often obscured the depth of her theological vision. Her correspondence, published as The Habit of Being (1979), revealed an intellect of extraordinary range and a mordant wit that delighted readers who had found the fiction forbidding. The letters remain the best introduction to her thought.

Since her death, O’Connor’s reputation has risen steadily. She is now universally acknowledged as one of the finest short story writers in the English language, ranked alongside Chekhov, Joyce, and Hemingway. Her influence is audible in writers as varied as Cormac McCarthy, Barry Hannah, Joy Williams, and George Saunders. The Complete Stories won the National Book Award in 1972, eight years after her death — an unusual posthumous honour that signalled her canonical arrival.

Key Works

• Wise Blood (1952)
• A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories (1955)
• The Violent Bear It Away (1960)
• Everything That Rises Must Converge (1965, posthumous)
• The Complete Stories (1971, posthumous)
• The Habit of Being: Letters (1979, posthumous)
• Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose (1969, posthumous)

Collecting O’Connor

O’Connor is a challenging and rewarding author to collect. The small print runs, fragile mid-century dust jackets, and her early death combine to make first editions scarce in any condition and genuinely rare in fine condition. Signed and inscribed copies are museum-grade items.

Wise Blood (1952, Harcourt, Brace) is the cornerstone title. The first edition is identified by the Harcourt, Brace imprint on the title page, the price of $3.00 on the front flap of the dust jacket, and the absence of any subsequent printing statement. The first-state jacket has no reviews on the rear panel. Fine copies in first-state jacket are very scarce and can command $8,000–$20,000. Without jacket, the book is a $500–$1,500 item.

A Good Man Is Hard to Find (1955, Harcourt, Brace) is arguably the more desirable title — the story collection on which her reputation primarily rests. First editions in jacket are uncommon and bring $5,000–$15,000 in fine condition. The Violent Bear It Away (1960) is somewhat easier to find; $2,000–$5,000 in jacket.

The posthumous titles — Everything That Rises Must Converge (1965) and The Complete Stories (1971) — are more accessible. Fine copies in jacket are available in the $500–$2,000 range.

Inscribed O’Connor copies are genuine rarities. She inscribed primarily to fellow writers and correspondents in her circle — Robert Lowell, Caroline Gordon, Robert and Sally Fitzgerald, Cecil Dawkins, Maryat Lee, and the nuns at the convent near Andalusia. Inscriptions to these figures are documented in the published correspondence and carry strong provenance. Her hand is distinctive: clear, upright, and small, usually in blue or black ink. Typed letters signed are the most accessible form of O’Connor autograph material, typically available in the $2,000–$8,000 range depending on content and recipient. Holograph letters, particularly those discussing her fiction or her theology, are significantly more valuable.

Institutional demand is strong: the O’Connor archives at Georgia College and at the Harry Ransom Center are active acquirers. Private collectors compete with libraries for the best material, which rarely appears on the open market.