Flannery O’Connor may now be acknowledged as the “Great American Catholic Author,” but this was not always the case. With Creating Flannery O’Connor, Daniel Moran explains how O’Connor attained that status, and how she felt about it, by examining the development of her literary reputation from the perspectives of critics, publishers, agents, adapters for other media, and contemporary readers.

Moran tells the story of O’Connor’s evolving career and the shaping of her literary identity. Drawing from the Farrar, Straus & Giroux archives at the New York Public Library and O’Connor’s private correspondence, he also concentrates on the ways in which Robert Giroux worked tirelessly to promote O’Connor and change her image from that of a southern oddity to an American author exploring universal themes.

Moran traces the critical reception in print of each of O’Connor’s works, finding parallels between her original reviewers and today’s readers. He examines the ways in which O’Connor’s work was adapted for the stage and screen and how these adaptations fostered her reputation as an artist. He also analyzes how—on reader review sites such as Goodreads—her work is debated and discussed among “common readers” in ways very much as it was when Wise Blood was first published in 1952.

Daniel Moran’s Creating Flannery O’Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers provides a compelling investigation of how O’Connor’s initial reputation of a Southern female writer over the years evolved into her status of great American writer…Through the de-construction of O’Connor’s literary portrait that has been created over decades through a number of venues, Dr. Moran re-creates a new version: elusive, fluid, and changing.

[A] fascinating study of O’Connor . . . Highly recommended.

Moran’s research is solid and insightful; his style clear and concise. This is an important addition to O’Connor scholar ship.

Moran explains how O’Connor got to where she is today and how she felt about her reputation at the time.

Conveys the depth of Flannery’s legacy as well as an even deeper understanding of all the mechanisms responsible for casting her as an enduring member of the literary canon.

What wonderful work: the whole is readable, lively, and always interesting. Every university worth its name will have
this book in its library, so necessary is it for those working on O’Connor. Creating Flannery O’Connor is a real achievement.

This book belies traditional notions of dry, academic scholarship. Moran . . . examines every aspect of O’Connor’s reputation as he fuses hard scholarship with pop culture references to O’Connor’s work.

DANIEL MORAN teaches writing at Rutgers University and history at Monmouth University. His work on G. K. Chesterton and John Ford has been published in academic journals, and he has contributed articles to a variety of teaching guides, including Poetry for Students, Short Stories for Students, and Drama for Students.