Flannery O'Connor

An essential collection of classic stories that established Flannery O'Connor's reputation as an American master of fiction-now with a new introduction by New York Times bestselling author Lauren Groff In 1955, with the title story and others in this critical edition, Flannery O'Connor firmly laid claim to her place as one of the most original and provocative writers of her generation. Steeped in a Southern Gothic tradition that would become synonymous...

Written between 1946 and 1947, while O'Connor was a student far from home at the University of Iowa, this spiritual journal was only recently discovered. It provides a rare portal into the interior life of a great writer, and is a record of a young woman's cry from the heart for love, grace, and art.

Flannery O'Connor is widely regarded as one of the great American writers of the twentieth century. Only in 1979, however, with the publication of her collected letters could the public fully see the depth of her personal faith and her wisdom as a spiritual guide. Drawing from all her works this anthology highlights O'Connor's distinctive voice as a spiritual writer, covering such topics as Christian Realism, the Church, the relation between faith...

Flannery O'Connor's astonishing and haunting first novel is a classic of twentieth-century literature. It is the story of Hazel Motes, a twenty-two-year-old caught in an unending struggle against his innate, desperate faith. He falls under the spell of a “blind” street preacher named Asa Hawks and his degenerate fifteen-year-old daughter. In an ironic, malicious gesture of his own non-faith, and to prove himself a greater cynic than Hawks, Hazel...

First published in 1955, The Violent Bear It Away is now a landmark in American literature. It is a dark and absorbing example of the Gothic sensibility and bracing satirical voice that are united in Flannery O'Conner's work. In it, the orphaned Francis Marion Tarwater and his cousin, Rayber, defy the prophecy of their dead uncle—that Tarwater will become a prophet and will baptize Rayber's young son, Bishop. A series of struggles ensue, as Tarwater...