Free Republic

She died before she was 40, leaving behind a body of blazingly original short fiction set in America’s segregated south. But her reputation has been tarnished by accusations of racism. Amonth before she died aged 39, on 3 August 1964, of complications from the autoimmune disease lupus, the American writer Flannery O’Connor wrote from her home in Milledgeville, Georgia to a regular correspondent, the academic and nun Sister Mariella Gable: “The wolf, I’m afraid, is inside tearing up the place.” The “wolf” that O’Connor refers to is her illness, the name of which derives from the Latin. The disease can...

I have a large tumor and if they don’t make haste and get rid of it, they will have to remove me and leave it. —Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964) The characteristic quip about the tumor is from a letter Flannery O’Connor wrote months before her death on August 3, 1964. I was hoping to find a copy of her first novel, Wise Blood, at the Bryn Mawr Wellesley Book Sale. I’d have gladly settled for the Ace paperback with a blonde in a black negligee on a cover promising “A brutal passionate novel of sin and redemption in a southern town.”...

Shortly before the plane touched down at 9 p.m. in Atlanta, a flight attendant handed out a written statement from the Wilbanks family to the media that said: "She has spoken to her fiance. He cannot wait to see her. She says the wedding is not called off, just postponed."