O'CONNOR, Flannery.

£150,000 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

The Violent Bear It Away. The author's final typescript for her second novel, her last lifetime publication. Accompanying the typescript are two author's proofs, the first dated September/October and the second dated October/November, which incorporate over 200 authorial corrections made by Flannery in absentia. Also present is a plate proof of the entire novel.Rather than a single corrected proof, these materials together make up the final typescript of the novel. They show O'Connor's unusual working method and her careful and close collaboration with her friend and editor, Robert Giroux, a decade-long creative process that culminated in the publication of this landmark of Southern Gothic literature.The Violent Bear It Away charts the spiritual awakening of young Mason Tarwater, torn between his great-uncle's evangelical faith and his Uncle Rayber's atheism. O'Connor was devoutly Catholic, and Giroux, himself from a Roman Catholic background, was a sensitive editor for her fierce vision of religion. Giroux edited O'Connor's three lifetime books and remained her editor and friend until her death in 1964. O'Connor was working on the book as early as 1952, "writing myself ragged on a novel that died a natural death after the first chapter when it ceased to be a short story" (Fitzgerald). She finished her first significant draft in January 1959 but continued tinkering with it for months. After struggling with the story for seven years, "she had no intention of finishing it quick

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