An ALS from Flannery O’Connor: 1958

Mary Flannery O’Connor (March 25, 1925 – August 3, 1964) was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist. She wrote two novels and thirty-two short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries.

She was a Southern writer who often wrote in a sardonic Southern Gothic style and relied heavily on regional settings and grotesque characters, often in violent situations. The unsentimental acceptance or rejection of the limitations or imperfection or difference of these characters (whether attributed to disability, race, crime, religion or sanity) typically underpins the drama.

Her writing reflected her Roman Catholic faith and frequently examined questions of morality and ethics. Her posthumously compiled Complete Stories won the 1972 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction and has been the subject of enduring praise.

ALS re: Reprinting “A View of the Woods” in Prize Stories 1959

Author: O’Connor, Flannery
Title: ALS re: Reprinting “A View of the Woods” in Prize Stories 1959
Publication: Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1959
Edition: First Edition

Description: Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1959. First Edition. Hardcover. A 1958 letter on Doubleday & Company letterhead requesting permission from Flannery O’Connor to reprint her story “A View of the Woods” in the Prize Stories 1959, edited by Paul Engle. Despite the letter twice referring to her as “Mr. [Flannery] O’Connor,” she signs and dates at the bottom of the letter. It is possible she herself is responsible for pointing out that error by correcting her mailing address to “Miss” Flannery O’Connor. Accompanying the letter is a Fine, price-clipped first edition of the collection in which the story was reprinted.

This video is a review of one of Flannery O’Connor’s most famous short stories, Revelation.  It is told by Bishop Robert Barron, producer of the Pivotal Players series of which Flanner O’Connor is the most recent addition.

It will give you a taste of her surroundings and the Catholic themes in her writing for which she is noted.