Flannery O'Connor Childhood Home Museum

Early Life

Mary Flannery O’Connor was born in Savannah, Georgia on March 25th, 1925 to Edward Francis O’Connor and Regina Cline O'Connor. She described herself as a “pigeon-toed child with a receding chin and a you-leave-me-alone-or-I’ll-bite-you complex.” The O'Connors moved from Savannah to Atlanta in 1938 just before Flannery's 13th birthday and then to Milledgeville the following year. Her father was diagnosed with lupus and passed away on February 1st, 1941 when Flannery was 15-years-old.

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Education

While in Savannah, Flannery attended St. Vincent's Academy and Sacred Heart School. Upon moving to Milledgeville, she attended and graduated from Peabody High School. She then entered Georgia State College for Women in an accelerated three-year program, graduating in June 1945 with a Social Science degree. In 1946, she was accepted to the University of Iowa on a Journalism scholarship with the intention of being a professional cartoonist. However, just one semester in, she transferred into the the now prestigious Iowa Writer’s Workshop. While there, she wrote her first short stories and started work on her first novel. Following the University of Iowa, she spent some time writing at Yaddo as part of their artists' residency.

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Adulthood

Following Yaddo, Flannery briefly lived in Manhattan and Connecticut to pursue publication. But in 1951, Flannery was diagnosed with disseminated lupus so returned to Georgia to seek treatment and settled at Andalusia, her mother's family farm in Milledgeville. At Andalusia, she raised some 100 peafowl among other birds such as swans and pheasants. She was a lifelong devout Catholic. She attended mass every day and studied books on Catholic theology. She was a social person, maintaining a wide correspondence, including with such famous writers as Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop. She never married and stated that she was fulfilled by her relationship with God.

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Writing

Flannery O'Connor is the published author of 31 short stories and two novels: Wise Blood (1952) and The Violent Bear It Away (1960). Her short stories were published in three collections: A Good Man is Hard to Find (1955), Everything That Rises Must Converge (1964), and The Complete Stories (1971). Her fiction is often categorized as Southern Gothic, though she preferred the term Southern Grotesque. Her stories reveal an uncanny grasp of the nuances of human behavior. She is also the posthumously published author of several nonfiction collections, including Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose (1969), The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor (1979), and A Prayer Journal (2013).

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End of Life

While battling lupus, Flannery completed more than two dozen short stories and her second novel. She succumbed to complications of her lupus on August 3rd, 1964 at the age of 39. She is buried in Milledgeville, Georgia at Memory Hill Cemetery with her parents.

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Acclaim

Flannery O’Connor was the three-time winner of the O. Henry Award and the posthumous winner of the 1972 National Book Award for Fiction. In 2015, she was honored with a postage stamp from the United States Postal Service. Her childhood home in Savannah and family farmhouse, Andalusia, in Milledgeville are both historic landmarks and museums today.