Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964)

            [Since we will spend three days discussing O’Connor’s works, the next three biographical posts will be organized into a general overview of O’Connor’s life (today), a look at her literary works and career by Mary Walle, and then we will finish up with a deeper look at her connection to Catholicism, compliments of Brijit Spencer…]

Mary Flannery O’Connor, considered to be one of the greatest American fiction writers and an important Roman Catholic apologist, was born in Savannah, Georgia on March 25, 1925. She was the only child of Regina Cline and Edward O’Connor. She attended Catholic school in Savannah until her family moved to Milledgeville, GA in 1938. Upon arriving in Milledgeville she attended Peabody Laboratory School, associated with George State College for Women (now Georgia College and State University). When she was fifteen her father was stricken with lupus and died, leaving Flannery devastated.

            As a result of her father’s death, Flannery decided to remain in Milledgeville and study in an accelerated three-year program at GSCW. She was a dedicated reader and artist and served as editor and contributor cartoons, fiction essays, and poems to her college’s literary magazine, The Corinthian. Her friends described her as gifted and shy as well as disdainful of mediocrity. Upon her graduation she was given a scholarship to the State University of Iowa (now the University of Iowa) to pursue a graduate degree in journalism.

            Shortly after she arrived in Iowa, she realized that she was not suited for journalism and switched to studying creative writing after the obtaining the approval of Paul Engle, head of the Writer’s Workshop . During this time, O’Connor built relationships with other important writers in her program including Andrew Lytle, the editor of Sewanee Review, who later published many of her short stories. Paul Engle later recalled that

O'Connor was so intensely shy and possessed such a nasal southern drawl that he himself read her stories aloud to workshop classes. He also asserted that O'Connor was one of the most gifted writers he had ever taught. Engle was the first to read and comment on the initial drafts of what would become Wise Blood, her first novel, published in 1952.

            The blossoming writer completed her M.F.A. in 1947 and was subsequently accepted to Yaddo, an artist’s retreat in Saratoga Springs, NY. She later moved into the garage apartment of Sally and Robert Fitzgerald (the famous literary critic and translator) in Connecticut. While living in Connecticut, Flannery found that living with the devoutly Catholic Fitzgeralds helped her obtain a “balance of solitude and communion necessary to her creativity and her intellectual and spiritual life.”

            These productive years of living and writing were interrupted in 1950 when Flannery was stricken with the same incurable autoimmune disease that killed her father. She soon returned to Milledgeville where she would live and write for the rest of her life. She lived just outside of town on her family farm, called Andalusia. In her final fourteen years, she devoted her time to writing and taking a few trips to lecture about her works. She raised peacocks (an important symbol in some of her stories) and stayed in touch with the literary world by maintaining correspondence with many different writers.

            Following a period of remission of her lupus, it returned in early 1964 during a surgery to remove a fibroid tumor. After several days in a coma, Flannery died on August 3, 1964 and was buried beside her father. In 1979, Sally Fitzgerald edited and published a posthumous collection of O’Connors letters entitled Habit of Being: Letters. This collection received very warm reviews as readers were able to see beyond her shocking stories, into her astute intellect as well as her warm, witty personality.

Quoted and paraphrased from:

Gordon, Sarah. "Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964)." New Georgia Encyclopedia. 2009.  University of Georgia Press. Web. 19 Jan. 2012. <http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-498>.