Thursday, January 31, 2008

Flannery O'Connor Home - Savannah, GA














Michael Minassian at the Flannery O'Connor Home, December 2007





Photo by Sue Minassian

Click here to watch the Movie on You Tube:


The author Flannery O'Connor (1924-64) was born a few blocks from this house and spent the first thirteen years of her life at this location in a quiet Savannah neighborhood. In 1947, she graduated from the Writer's Workshop at the University of Iowa with a Master's degree in Fine Arts.





Flannery O'Connor standing next to a self-portrait.



O'Connor is known as a Southern Gothic writer and is the author or two novels - Wise Blood (1952) and The Violent Bear It Away (1960) - but she is best known for her collections of short stories A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories (1955) and Everything That Rises Must Converge (published posthumously in 1965).

















Photo by Sue Minassian

The Flannery O'Connor Home is located at 207 E. Charlton St., Savannah, Georgia. The house itself dates from 1856 and is a part of the Savannah area which has been designated a National Historic Landmark.





The house is open to the public on weekends only from 1-4 P.M. On December 23, 2007, we visited the house and spoke to Docent Toby Aldrich. After a tour of the living quarters, we set up our camera in front of the fireplace and Toby answered questions about O'Connor's life and career. The house is maintained by The Flannery O'Connor Childhood Home Foundation. For more information visit:



http://www.flanneryoconnorhome.org/index.html


Another good site for information about Flanner O'Connor's life is the web site of the Andalusia Farm in Milledgeville, Georgia where she spent the last thirteen years of her life:


http://www.andalusiafarm.org/