This book brings together for the first time the complete stories—thirty-one in all—of one of the great American writers of short fiction, Flannery O'Connor. The two famous collections, Everything That Rises Must Converge and A Good Man Is Hard to Find, which she put together during her relatively short lifetime—she died in 1964 at the age of thirty-nine —contain only nineteen stories. There are, however, twelve uncollected stories, which now appear in book form for the first time.
This book opens with her first story, "The Geranium," written …
This book brings together for the first time the complete stories—thirty-one in all—of one of the great American writers of short fiction, Flannery O'Connor. The two famous collections, Everything That Rises Must Converge and A Good Man Is Hard to Find, which she put together during her relatively short lifetime—she died in 1964 at the age of thirty-nine —contain only nineteen stories. There are, however, twelve uncollected stories, which now appear in book form for the first time.
This book opens with her first story, "The Geranium," written in 1946 while she was working for her master's degree at the University of Iowa. It ends with "Judgement Day," which she sent to her publisher shortly before her death and which is now seen to be a brilliantly rewritten and transfigured version of "The Geranium."
The other previously uncollected stories are "The Partridge Festival,
"Why Do the Heathen Rage?, "The Barber," "You Can't Be Any Poorer Than Dead," "The Turkey," 'Wildcat," "The Heart of the Park," "The Peeler," "The Train," "Enoch and the Gorilla," and "The Crop." There is an introduction and memoir by Robert Giroux, her editor since the time of Wise Blood, her first book. Mr. Giroux also contributes bibliographical notes on each of the thirty-one stories.
