Flannery O'Connor

Robert Giroux

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

Colorado

Thirty-one tales depicting the humorous, if near tragic conditions of life in the Deep South during the fifties

The Complete Stories

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Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

A Novel

The passengers on the train to Taulkinham show mixed reactions when Haze questions their belief in Jesus.

Wise Blood

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Iowa

And Other Stories

A collection of short stories depicting the emotions and life-styles of the inhabitants of the rural South

A Good Man Is Hard to Find

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Connecticut

"A back country orphan struggles to defy his uncle's prophesy that he will become a baptist prophet"--NoveList.

The Violent Bear It Away

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Robert Fitzgerald

Arizona

Everything That Rises Must Converge: Stories

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Florida

Letters of Flannery O'Connor

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Special Award

"I have come to think that the true likeness of Flannery O'Connor will be painted by herself, a self-portrait in words, to be found in her letters . . . There she stands, a phoenix risen from her own words: calm, slow, funny, courteous, both modest and very sure of herself, intense, sharply penetrating, devout but never pietistic, downright, occasionally fierce, and honest in a way that restores honor to the word."--Sally Fitzgerald, from the Introduction

The Habit of Being

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Wise Blood / a Good Man Is Hard to Find / the Violent Bear It Away / Everything That Rises Must Converge / Stories, Essays, Letters

In her short lifetime, Flannery O'Connor became one of the most distinctive American writers of the twentieth century. By birth a native of Georgia and a Roman Catholic, O'Connor depicts, in all its comic and horrendous incongruity, the limits of worldly wisdom and the mysteries of divine grace in the "Christ-haunted" Protestant South. This Library of America collection, the most comprehensive ever published, contains all of her novels and short-story collections, as well as nine other stories, eight of her most important essays, and a selection of 259 witty, spirited, and revealing letters, twenty-one published here for the first time.

Her fiction brilliantly explores the human obsession with seemingly banal things. It might be a new hat or clean hogs or, for Hazel Motes, hero of Wise Blood (1952), an automobile. "Nobody with a good car needs to be justified," Hazel assures himself while using its hood for a pulpit to preach his "Church Without Christ." As in O'Connor's subsequent work, the characters in this novel are driven to violence, even murder, and their strong vernacular endows them with the discomforting reality of next-door neighbors. "In order to recognize a freak," she remarks in one of her essays, "you have to have a conception of the whole man."

In the title story of her first, dazzling collection of stories, A Good Man Is Hard to Find (1955), the old grandmother discovers the comic irrelevance of good manners when she and her family meet up with the sinister Misfit, who claims there is "no pleasure but meanness." The terror of urban dislocation in "The Artificial Nigger," the bizarre baptism in "The River," or one-legged Hulga Hopewell's encounter with a Bible salesman in "Good Country People"--these startling events give readers the uneasy sense of mysteries about to be revealed.

Her second novel, The Violent Bear It Away (1960), casts the shadow of the Old Testament across a landscape of backwoods shacks, modern towns, and empty highways. Caught between the prophetic fury of his great-uncle and the unrelenting rationalism of his uncle, fourteen-year-old Francis Tarwater undergoes a terrifying trial of faith when he is commanded to baptize his idiot cousin.

The nine stories in Everything That Rises Must Converge (1965) show O'Connor's powers at their height. The title story is a terrifying, heart-rending drama of familial and racial misunderstanding. "Revelation" and "The Enduring Chill" probe further into conflicts between parental figures and recalcitrant offspring, where as much tension is generated from quiet conversation as from the physical violence of gangsters and fanatics.

LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

Flannery o'Connor: Collected Works (LOA #39)

This is a retired library looking in good condition

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

"I would like to write a beautiful prayer," writes the young Flannery O'Connor in this deeply spiritual journal, recently discovered among her papers in Georgia. "There is a whole sensible world around me that I should be able to turn to Your praise." Written between 1946 and 1947 while O'Connor was a student far from home at the University of Iowa, A Prayer Journal is a rare portal into the interior life of the great writer. Not only does it map O'Connor's singular relationship with the divine, but it shows how entwined her literary desire was with her yearning for God. "I must write down that I am to be an artist. Not in the sense of aesthetic frippery but in the sense of aesthetic craftsmanship; otherwise I will feel my loneliness continually . . . I do not want to be lonely all my life but people only make us lonelier by reminding us of God. Dear God please help me to be an artist, please let it lead to You."

O'Connor could not be more plain about her literary ambition: "Please help me dear God to be a good writer and to get something else accepted," she writes. Yet she struggles with any trace of self-regard: "Don't let me ever think, dear God, that I was anything but the instrument for Your story."

As W. A. Sessions, who knew O'Connor, writes in his introduction, it was no coincidence that she began writing the stories that would become her first novel, Wise Blood, during the years when she wrote these singularly imaginative Christian meditations. Including a facsimile of the entire journal in O'Connor's own hand, A Prayer Journal is the record of a brilliant young woman's coming-of-age, a cry from the heart for love, grace, and art.

A Prayer Journal

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Occasional Prose

O'Connor discusses such subjects as the art of writing, the techniques for teaching literature, and the importance of religion to the creative artist

Mystery and Manners

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Massachusetts

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New York

3 by Flannery O'Connor

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Three by Flannery O'Connor

The Uncollected Letters of Flannery o'Connor and Friends

A literary treasure of over one hundred unpublished letters from National Book Award-winning author Flannery O'Connor and her circle of extraordinary friends.

Flannery O'Connor is a master of twentieth-century American fiction, joining, since her untimely death in 1964, the likes of Hawthorne, Hemingway, and Faulkner. Those familiar with her work know that her powerful ethical vision was rooted in a quiet, devout faith and informed all she wrote and did.

Good Things Out of Nazareth, a much-anticipated collection of many of O'Connor's previously unpublished letters--along with those of literary luminaries such as Walker Percy (The Moviegoer), Caroline Gordon (None Shall Look Back), Katherine Anne Porter (Ship of Fools), Robert Giroux and movie critic Stanley Kauffmann. The letters explore such themes as creativity, faith, suffering, and writing. Brought together, they form a riveting literary portrait of these friends, artists, and thinkers. Here we find their joys and loves, as well as their trials and tribulations as they struggle with doubt and illness while championing their beliefs and often confronting racism in American society during the civil rights era.

Praise for Good Things Out of Nazareth

"An epistolary group portrait that will appeal to readers interested in the Catholic underpinnings of O'Connor's life and work . . . These letters by the National Book Award-winning short story writer and her friends alternately fit and break the mold. Anyone looking for Southern literary gossip will find plenty of barbs. . . . But there's also higher-toned talk on topics such as the symbolism in O'Connor's work and the nature of free will."--Kirkus Reviews
 
"A fascinating set of Flannery O'Connor's correspondence . . . The compilation is highlighted by gems from O'Connor's writing mentor, Caroline Gordon. . . . While O'Connor's milieu can seem intimidatingly insular, the volume allows readers to feel closer to the writer, by glimpsing O'Connor's struggles with lupus, which sometimes leaves her bedridden or walking on crutches, and by hearing her famously strong Georgian accent in the colloquialisms she sprinkles throughout the letters. . . . This is an important addition to the knowledge of O'Connor, her world, and her writing."--Publishers Weekly

Good Things Out of Nazareth

Booker T. Washington

Charles W. Chesnutt

W. E. B. Du Bois

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Claude McKay

Lillian Smith

Langston Hughes

Erskine Caldwell

Richard Wright

Ralph Ellison

Eudora Welty

Robert Hayden

Margaret Walker

Gwendolyn Brooks

James Baldwin

Audre. Lorde

Estate of Lucille Clifton

June Jordan

Michael S. Harper

Haki Madhubuti

Nikki Giovanni

Constance Curry

Toi Derricotte

Wanda Coleman

Marilyn Nelson

Rita Dove

Anthony Grooms

Cyrus Cassells

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

Frances E. W. Harper

Mary Burrill

Angelina Weld Grimké

Dudley Randall

Martin Luther King

Howard Sackler

Eldridge Cleaver

David Hernandez

Bebe Moore Campbell

Patricia J. Williams

Walter Mosley

Amiri Baraka

American Literature from Jim Crow to Reconciliation

This title offers perspectives on civil rights not found in history books. This anthology of drama, essays, fiction, and poetry presents a thoughtful, classroom-tested selection of the best literature for learning about the long civil rights movement. Unique in its focus on creative writing, the volume also ranges beyond a familiar 1954-1968 chronology to include works from the 1890s to the present. The civil rights movement was a complex, ongoing process of defining national values such as freedom, justice, and equality. In ways that historical documents cannot, these collected writings show how Americans negotiated this process - politically, philosophically, emotionally, spiritually, and creatively.Gathered here are works by some of the most influential writers to engage issues of race and social justice in America, including James Baldwin, Flannery O'Connor, Amiri Baraka, and Nikki Giovanni. The volume begins with works from the post-Reconstruction period when racial segregation became legally sanctioned and institutionalized. This section, titled 'The Rise of Jim Crow,' spans the period from Frances E. W. Harper's Iola Leroy to Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. In the second section, 'The Fall of Jim Crow,' Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'Letter from Birmingham Jail' and a chapter from ""The Autobiography of Malcolm X"" appear alongside poems by Robert Hayden, June Jordan, and others who responded to these key figures and to the events of the time.'Reflections and Continuing Struggles,' the last section, includes works by such current authors as Rita Dove, Anthony Grooms, and Patricia J. Williams. These diverse perspectives on the struggle for civil rights can promote the kinds of conversations that we, as a nation, still need to initiate.

The Civil Rights Reader

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Jessica Hooten Wilson

Flannery OConnor

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

A Behind-the-Scenes Look at a Work in Progress

"Wilson does a great service in resurrecting one of O'Connor's lesser-known works."--Publishers Weekly When celebrated American novelist and short story writer Flannery O'Connor died at the age of thirty-nine in 1964, she left behind an unfinished third novel titled Why Do the Heathen Rage? Scholarly experts uncovered and studied the material, deeming it unpublishable. It stayed that way for more than fifty years. Until now. For the past ten-plus years, award-winning author Jessica Hooten Wilson has explored the 378 pages of typed and handwritten material of the novel--transcribing pages, organizing them into scenes, and compiling everything to provide a glimpse into what O'Connor might have planned to publish. This book is the result of Hooten Wilson's work. In it, she introduces O'Connor's novel to the public for the first time and imagines themes and directions O'Connor's work might have taken. Including illustrations and an afterword from noted artist Steve Prince (One Fish Studio), the book unveils scenes that are both funny and thought-provoking, ultimately revealing that we have much to learn from what O'Connor left behind.

Flannery O'connor's Why Do the Heathen Rage

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Browse by categories

Flannery O'Connor

The Complete Stories

Flannery O'Connor

Wise Blood

Flannery O'Connor

A Good Man Is Hard to Find

Flannery O'Connor

The Violent Bear It Away

Flannery O'Connor

Everything That Rises Must Converge: Stories

Flannery O'Connor

The Habit of Being

Flannery O'Connor

Flannery o'Connor: Collected Works (LOA #39)

Flannery O'Connor

A Prayer Journal

Flannery O'Connor

Mystery and Manners

Flannery O'Connor

Flannery o'Connor: Collected Works (LOA #39)

Flannery O'Connor

Three by Flannery O'Connor

Flannery O'Connor

Good Things Out of Nazareth

Booker T. Washington

The Civil Rights Reader

Jessica Hooten Wilson

Flannery O'connor's Why Do the Heathen Rage