The Letters of Flannery O’Connor

August 3: Flannery O’Connor died on this day in 1964, from lupus and attendant problems. O’Connor’s fiction continues to hold its place, but many readers rank her letters as highly. “There she stands,” writes O’Connor scholar Sally Fitzgerald, “a phoenix risen from her own words: calm, slow, funny, courteous…occasionally fierce, and honest in a way that restores honor to the word.”