Flannery O'Connor: An Annotated Reference Guide to Criticism

by R. Neil Scott

Description

If she were alive today, Flannery O’Connor would be amazed at the enormous surge of criticism published during the last 25 years in response to her novels, short stories, essays and letters.  

Reflecting ten years of scholarly effort, R. Neil Scott’s Flannery O'Connor: An Annotated Reference Guide to Criticism, documents this interest and serves as the comprehensive sequel to Robert E. Golden’s 1977 contribution to O’Connor scholarship, Flannery O’Connor and Caroline Gordon: A Reference Guide (G.K. Hall) .

The growth in interest in this influential writers' life, writing and art is striking. Where Golden's 202 page Guide referred students to 799 books, articles and dissertations published before 1976, Scott’s 1,083 page bibliography cites and describes 3,297 books, articles, dissertations, master’s theses, and audio-visual materials. 

Scott’s Guide is designed to offer readers descriptive abstracts of O’Connor-related criticism published from 1975 to 2000, but he also cites and describes hundreds of pre-1975 entries not included in the previous work, including: descriptive abstracts of dissertations (1961-2000); a checklist of master’s theses (1961-2000); and, citations to scholarly reviews of book-length criticism.

Entries are arranged first by type of criticism, then alphabetically by author. The volume is meticulously indexed with "Author," "Name" and "Subject" indexes. The Author index refers readers to 3,297 items by 2,474 different authors; and the Name index refers to 1,625 different individuals mentioned in the text. The Subject index is equally impressive as it uses 3,230 subject headings and 720 additional "See" and "See Also" references to refer readers to appropriate entries.

Flannery O'Connor : An Annotated Reference Guide to Criticism is destined to become a landmark contribution and tribute to the scholarly community interested in O'Connor's life and work.