Flannery O'CONNOR. Wise Blood. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1952. 1st ed + dust-jacket

Flannery O'CONNOR (1925-1964). Wise Blood. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1952. Octavo (8 x 5 ¼ inches; 203 x 133 mm). Pp. [i-ii; 1-]9-232[-238].  Light yellow boards, spine lettered in dark grey/black, dust-jacket (jacket chipped and with some small tears, light discoloration and small splits to head and foot of spine).

First edition of the author’s highly-acclaimed first book. “Wise Blood is the first novel by American author Flannery O'Connor, published in 1952. The novel was assembled from disparate stories first published in Mademoiselle, Sewanee Review and Partisan Review. The first chapter is an expanded version of her Master's thesis, "The Train", and other chapters are reworked versions of "The Peeler," "The Heart of the Park" and "Enoch and the Gorilla". The novel concerns a returning World War II veteran who, haunted by a life-long crisis of faith, resolves to form an anti-religious ministry in an eccentric, fictionalized Southern city after finding his family homestead abandoned without a trace.” (wikipedia).

“Mary Flannery O'Connor … was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist. She wrote two novels and 31 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries. She was a Southern writer who often wrote in a sardonic Southern Gothic style and relied heavily on regional settings and grotesque characters, often in violent situations. The unsentimental acceptance or rejection of the limitations or imperfections or differences of these characters (whether attributed to disability, race, crime, religion or sanity) typically underpins the drama. “ (wikipedia).