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Flannery O'Connor's Manhattan
This book offers a unique twist to the Who’s Who of midcentury writers, editors, and artists.
Much is made of Flannery O’Connor’s life on the Georgia dairy farm, Andalusia―a rural setting that clearly influenced her writing. But before she lived on that farm, before she showed signs of having lupus, before she became dependent on her mother and then succumbed to the disease at thirty-nine, O’Connor lived in the northeast. She stayed at the artists’ colony, Yaddo, in 1948 and early 1949, and lived in Connecticut with good friends from fall of 1949 through all of 1950. But in between those experiences and, perhaps more importantly, O’Connor lived in Manhattan.
In her biographies, little is said of her time in Gotham; in some sources, this period gets no more than one sentence. But little is said because little has been known. In Flannery O’Connor’s Manhattan, the author’s goal is to explore New York City from O’Connor’s point of view. To do this, the author consults not just letters (both unpublished and published) and biography, but five personal address books housed in Emory’s Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archive and Rare Book Library. The result is a book of interest to both the O’Connor fan and the O’Connor scholar, not to mention those interested in midcentury Manhattan.
Flannery O’Connor’s Manhattan is part guide to the who-was-who and who-lived-where of New York from roughly 1948 to 1964, at least those as they mattered to O’Connor. It also acts as a window to the writer’s experiences in the city, whether she was coming into town for a series of meetings or strolling down Broadway on her way to lunch. In the end, it is the combination of the who-she-knew and the what-she-did that formed O’Connor’s personal view of what is arguably the most famous of American cities.
Much is made of Flannery O’Connor’s life on the Georgia dairy farm, Andalusia―a rural setting that clearly influenced her writing. But before she lived on that farm, before she showed signs of having lupus, before she became dependent on her mother and then succumbed to the disease at thirty-nine, O’Connor lived in the northeast. She stayed at the artists’ colony, Yaddo, in 1948 and early 1949, and lived in Connecticut with good friends from fall of 1949 through all of 1950. But in between those experiences and, perhaps more importantly, O’Connor lived in Manhattan.
In her biographies, little is said of her time in Gotham; in some sources, this period gets no more than one sentence. But little is said because little has been known. In Flannery O’Connor’s Manhattan, the author’s goal is to explore New York City from O’Connor’s point of view. To do this, the author consults not just letters (both unpublished and published) and biography, but five personal address books housed in Emory’s Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archive and Rare Book Library. The result is a book of interest to both the O’Connor fan and the O’Connor scholar, not to mention those interested in midcentury Manhattan.
Flannery O’Connor’s Manhattan is part guide to the who-was-who and who-lived-where of New York from roughly 1948 to 1964, at least those as they mattered to O’Connor. It also acts as a window to the writer’s experiences in the city, whether she was coming into town for a series of meetings or strolling down Broadway on her way to lunch. In the end, it is the combination of the who-she-knew and the what-she-did that formed O’Connor’s personal view of what is arguably the most famous of American cities.
208 pages, Paperback
Published August 20, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 24, 2025
While looking through Flannery O'Connor’s letters in archives, Laborde was intrigued by O’Connor’s address books instead. Serendipity and the curiosity of a good researcher can transform the seemingly mundane into fascinating details. And that’s exactly what Laborde does with the places O’Connor stayed and with the people she corresponded with and/or knew in NYC. Some of the latter are literary luminaries; plenty others have interesting stories as well.
The book is laid out in an accessible way for easy-referencing and paging back-and-forth. It's not a work to necessarily read straight through, though I did. And even though it’s an academic work, meticulously researched and sourced, I found Laborde’s easygoing, friendly prose style very entertaining.
The book is laid out in an accessible way for easy-referencing and paging back-and-forth. It's not a work to necessarily read straight through, though I did. And even though it’s an academic work, meticulously researched and sourced, I found Laborde’s easygoing, friendly prose style very entertaining.
November 19, 2025
What a fascinating look into O'Connor, through the address books she maintained. I'm one of those folks who still uses a palm-size address book and can totally relate to Laborde's insightful statement:
But people move. Marry. Die. We remove some folks from our lives, and others pointedly remove themselves. And in their absence, we fill the gaps with new people, whether friends, relatives, or business associates. Eventually, the once orderly address book becomes a mess of cross-outs, X's, and arrows. The book itself becomes a story told by disrupted alphabetizations, corrections, and the occasional odd note . . .
Following this trail of small mysteries, Laborde, an award-winning author, traces the famous writer's time in Manhattan and New York State, and doesn't shy away from the controversy of her antisemitism/racial bias (though it appears that the exposure to different ideas in the city appeared to have changed her viewpoints to some degree, as witnessed in some of her letters, which Laborde also explores).
A must read for fans of the writer and anyone interested in the myriad people who made up the publishing world during that time. There are in addition mini bios I enjoyed of the address book's entrants.
But people move. Marry. Die. We remove some folks from our lives, and others pointedly remove themselves. And in their absence, we fill the gaps with new people, whether friends, relatives, or business associates. Eventually, the once orderly address book becomes a mess of cross-outs, X's, and arrows. The book itself becomes a story told by disrupted alphabetizations, corrections, and the occasional odd note . . .
Following this trail of small mysteries, Laborde, an award-winning author, traces the famous writer's time in Manhattan and New York State, and doesn't shy away from the controversy of her antisemitism/racial bias (though it appears that the exposure to different ideas in the city appeared to have changed her viewpoints to some degree, as witnessed in some of her letters, which Laborde also explores).
A must read for fans of the writer and anyone interested in the myriad people who made up the publishing world during that time. There are in addition mini bios I enjoyed of the address book's entrants.
August 3, 2025
I'm a huge O'Connor fan, this book is a fascinating look at her life and the people around her during a specific time period, in a few very specific places. The introduction might be the most compelling part of the book - the author's discovery of address books and how she used them to map out O'Connor's time in Manhattan was just an amazing process.
All O'Connor fans should read this.
ps I had to request the book through inter-library loan. I love the power that library's give us all.
All O'Connor fans should read this.
ps I had to request the book through inter-library loan. I love the power that library's give us all.
July 7, 2025
Five stars for research - using O’Connor’s address books, letters, and information about 1950s New York. This will be quite useful for scholars of that era.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews