The Letters of Flannery O'Connor and Caroline Gordon

"This girl is a real novelist," wrote Caroline Gordon about Flannery OConnor upon being asked to review a manuscript of OConnors first novel, Wise Blood. "She is already a rare phenomenon: a Catholic novelist with a real dramatic sense, one who relies more on her technique than her piety." This collection of letters and other documents offers the most complete portrait of the relationship between two of the American Souths most acclaimed twentieth-century writers: Flannery OConnor and Caroline Gordon. Gordon (18951981) had herself been a protge of an important novelist, Ford Madox Ford, before publishing nine novels and three short story collections of her own, most notably, The Forest of the South and Old Red and Other Stories, and she would offer insights and friendship to OConnor during almost all of OConnors career. As revealed in this collection of correspondence, Gordons thirteen-year friendship with OConnor (192564) and the critiques of OConnors fiction that she wrote during this time not only fostered each writers career but occasioned a remarkable series of letters full of insights about the craft of writing. Gordon, a more established writer at the start of their correspondence, acted as a mentor to the younger OConnor and their letters reveal Gordons strong hand in shaping some of OConnors most acclaimed work, including Wise Blood, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," and "The Displaced Person."