Flannery O'Connor Collection: Home

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Contact information: 478-445-0988 or scinfo@gcsu.libanswers.com

Flannery O'Connor and Betty Hester became acquainted after Hester wrote O'Connor in the summer of 1955. O'Connor was pleased with Hester's interpretation of her writing, and a friendship blossomed through correspondence.

Hester became known as the individual referred to as "A" in The Habit of Being (1979), by Sally Fitzgerald. For anonymity, the letter "A" was substituted for her name.

From 1979 to 1998, the identity of "A" was shrouded in mystery for O'Connor scholars, until after a long battle with depression, Hester died by suicide, and only then was her identity released to the public.

Betty Hester made frequent trips to visit O'Connor at Andalusia. The two shared many things in common, including their love for reading and writing. Hester, a fellow Roman Catholic, wrote book reviews for the Catholic magazine, The Bulletin, as did O'Connor. Although Hester wrote fiction, she never published her stories, but she shared her writing with O'Connor.

Hester and O'Connor remained friends and corresponded until O'Connor's death in 1964. It is through the correspondence with Hester published in The Habit of Being that scholars gain a clearer view of O'Connor's thoughts on writing and greater insight into her Catholic beliefs.

Flannery O'Connor's first published works were her cartoons, appearing in her high school newspaper, the Peabody Palladium. By the end of 1941, the Palladium reported that O'Connor had written and illustrated three books about geese: Mistaken Identity, Elmo, and Gertrude, which went unpublished. The article also mentions O'Connor's decorated school notebook, painted with oils and covered with cellophane. At the same time, she was also designing and selling handmade lapel pins at a local store in Milledgeville.

O'Connor's career as a cartoonist continued at Georgia State College for Women, appearing as early as October 1942 in the college newspaper, The Colonnade. O'Connor's cartoons slyly capture humorous views of campus life, school performances, social activities, studying, and coexisting with the U.S. Navy WAVES.

While at GSCW, her cartoons appeared in almost every college publication. In 1944, O'Connor was appointed Art Editor of the college yearbook, the Spectrum, designing numerous cartoons for the 1944-1945 yearbook, including the inside covers depicting campus scenes. In 1944, O'Connor also submitted cartoons to The New Yorker, but the magazine declined to publish them. (CW 1240)

Many of O'Connor's cartoons were linoleum-block prints. Linoleum-block printing involves cutting or etching an image onto a linoleum sheet. In O'Connor's case, she attached the linoleum to a piece of wood, applied a solid color of ink to the linoleum cutting, and printed the image onto a piece of paper. The cartoon appears as a b&w image in the final publication.

O'Connor's interest in creating cartoons continued after leaving home in 1945 to pursue a graduate degree in writing at the University of Iowa. Among O'Connor's first courses at The University of Iowa were two classes in advanced drawing. She hoped to support her writing by selling cartoons to national publications. However, when unable to sell any of her cartoons, she devoted all her energy to writing.

Two Elderly Women - O'Connor on Woodblock

The Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction was established by the University of Georgia Press 1983 to highlight gifted emerging writers by bringing their work to a national readership.

Past Winners

• Robert H. Abel
• Tony Ardizzone
• Catherine Brady
• Gary Fincke
• Mary Hood
• Ha Jin
• Dana Johnson
• C.M. Mayo
• Darrell Spencer
• Kellie Wells

Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964) was a Southern writer known for her distinctive contributions to American literature through her short stories and novels. Born in Savannah, Georgia, O'Connor was raised in Milledgeville. She attended Georgia State College for Women, now Georgia College & State University, from 1942 to 1945, majoring in Social Science with a minor in English. She then attended the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she further developed her craft.

O'Conor's writing is celebrated for its unique blend of dark humor, grotesque characters, and exploration of moral and spiritual themes. As a devout Roman Catholic, she used her fiction to probe questions of grace, redemption, and human frailty with the context of a modern, often secular world. Her works artfully juxtapose the violence of human nature with moments of profound religious insight.

O'Connor's literary importance lies in her ability to depict the complexities of the human condition and the South's cultural and spiritual landscape. Her influence extends beyond Southern Gothic fiction to modern American literature, inspiring writers to grapple with the intersection of faith, morality, and identity. Though she died young at age 39 from lupus, her posthumously compiled Complete Stories won the 1972 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction and her legacy continues to endure through her vivid, thought provoking narratives that continue to captivate readers and scholars alike. 

The Jean W. Cash Collection contains research materials compiled by Dr. Jean W. Cash, James Madison University (VA), for the biography, Flannery O'Connor, A Life, published in 2002 by the University of Tennessee Press.  The collection includes correspondence, notes regarding interviews, audio recordings of interviews conducted between 1989 and 1993, and questionnaires.  The box list contains descriptions of the materials.

Arrangement Note

Dr. Cash donated her research materials to Special Collections in April 2008. The materials are organized by physical content, i.e., audio cassettes, correspondence, questionnaires, clippings, and articles. 

Scope and Content

The Jean W. Cash papers consist of research materials gathered by Dr. Cash for her biography of Flannery O'Connor. 

Listed below are categories of material donated:  

• Taped interviews and transcripts of phone interviews with a number of O'Connor's relatives and friends from Savannah, including one with Sister Consolata, O'Connor's third grade teacher.  Other tapes from Savannah are copies of interviews conducted by Hugh Brown shortly after he established the Foundation that purchased O'Connor childhood home in Savannah in the late 1980s;
• Taped interviews with a number of her friends and acquaintances in Milledgeville (including a transcript of a telephone interview with Lila Blitch, her eighth-grade teacher); 
• Interviews with two of her teachers at GSCW (George Beiswanger and Helen Greene), and questionnaires from a number of her classmates from the GSCW's Class of 1945;
• Material from Cash's Iowa research-questionnaires from a number of her colleagues in the Workshop, as well as copies of letters and other material from the O'Connor, Stephen Wilbers, and Paul Engle files in the University of Iowa library;  taped interviews with Walter Sullivan and Andrew Lytle and also part of this material; 
• Material concerning O'Connor's time at Yaddo, includes a Xeroxed copy of     Malcolm Cowley's notes from the episode involving Robert Lowell's attempt to remove Elizabeth Ames from her position as director of Yaddo;  a taped interview with Alfred Kazin, concerning his memories of O'Connor at Yaddo and during a visit to her in Milledgeville;
• Tapes of interviews with some of O'Connor's friends during her last 12 years in Milledgeville, among them those with Mary Barbara Tate, William Kirkland, Ted Spivey, William Sessions, Robert Drake, and Tom and Louise Gossett;
• Other miscellaneous materials.

•  Box List for the Jean W. Cash Collection (pdf)