The homage paid to Flannery O'Connor's stunning short stories and novels by scholars and writers is nothing short of extraordinary and has earned her the reputation of a master of the literary form. Her stories are often identified with Georgia settings of religious imagery, bizarre characters, and violent episodes. Since her death of a hereditary illness in 1964, O'Connor's works have inspired dozens of book-length studies, two hundred theses and dissertations, thousands of articles, and compilations of essays.
During her lifetime, O'Connor won three O. Henry awards for short fiction, received prestigious grants and fellowships from the National Instititute of Arts and Letters, the Kenyon Review, and the Ford Foundation, and was awarded honorary doctoral degrees by Smith and St. Mary's colleges. In death her honors have continued with a National Book Award (for her collected stories) and a National Book Critics Circle award (for her collected letters).
O'Connor believed good writing begins with an "experience, not an abstraction," and her writing reflects this by being firmly rooted in Middle Georgia, where her family had lived since before the Civil War. A self-described Christian realist, O'Connor wrote, "The only thing that keeps me from being a regional writer is being a Catholic and the only thing that keeps me from being a Catholic writer (in the narrow sense) is being a Southerner."
Photo courtesy of the Flannery O'Connor Collection, Ina Dillard Russell Library, Georgia College & State University.
The following editions of Flannery O'Connor's works and collections of her writing may be found in the Hall of Fame collections of the Hargrett Library:
Wise Blood. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1952.
Wise Blood. London: Spearman, 1955.
A Good Man Is Hard To Find and Other Stories. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1955.
The Artificial Nigger and Other Tales. London: Neville Spearman, 1957.
The Violent Bear It Away. New York: Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, 1960.
Exkursionen: Erzählungen unserer Zeit. München: C. Hanser, 1964.
Everything That Rises Must Converge. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1965.
Everything That Rises Must Converge. London: Faber & Faber, 1965.
En god mand er svaer at finde. Copenhagen: Grafisk Forlag, 1965.
Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose. Sally and Robert Fitzgerald, eds. London: Faber & Faber, 1972.
The Habit of Being: Letters. Ed. by Sally Fitzgerald. New York: Farrar, Straus, 1979.
Higher Education. Winston-Salem. N. Car.: Palaemon, 1980.
Home of the Brave. Albondocani Press, N.Y., 1981.
The Presence of Grace and Other Book Reviews. Compiled by Leo J. Zuber with Carter W. Martin, ed. Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 1983.
Three by Flannery O'Connor . New American Library, 1983.
The Correspondence of Flannery O'Connor and the Brainard Cheneys. Jackson, Miss.: University Press of Mississippi, 1986.
Conversations with Flannery O'Connor. Jackson, Miss.: University Press of Mississippi, 1987.
Collected Works. New York: Library of America, 1988.
Flannery O'Connor: Spiritual Writings. Ed. by Robert Ellsberg. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2003.
L'habitude d'être: lettres. [The Habit of Being. French.] Paris: Ed. Gallimard,2004.
The Violent Bear It Away.New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux2007.
Wise Blood.New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux,2007.
The Cartoons of Flannery O'Connor at Georgia College. Milledgeville, Ga.: Georgia College & State University, 2010.
Flannery O'Connor: The Cartoons. Ed. by Kelly Gerald. Seattle, Wash.: Fantagraphics, 2012.
The Special Collections Department of the Russell Library of Georgia College in Milledgeville is the principal repository of the papers of Flannery O'Connor, and its holdings include the writer's manuscripts, personal correspondence, and private library.
The Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library of Emory University, Atlanta, also has a collection of Flannery O'Connor-related correspondence and miscellaneous materials.