This volume is an effort to introduce O'Connor to a new generation of readers by including previously published essays that clarify her religious ideas, her narrative technique, her use of humor, and the regional and social context of her fiction. Original essays commissioned especially for this volume make significant new contributions to the understanding and appreciation of her work. Essays discuss the religious context of such stories as "A Good Man is Hard to Find" and "Good Country People." Other essays explore O'Connor's use of humor in the story "Temple of the Holy Ghost" as well as her two short novels Wise Blood and The Violent Bear it Away.

On Flannery O'Connor and the short story/romance tradition / Charles E. May -- Biography of Flannery O'Connor / Charles E. May -- The Paris review perspective / Paul Elie for The Paris review -- Flannery O'Connor and the art of the story / Susan Srigley -- The "Christ-haunted" South : contextualizing Flannery O'Connor / John Hayes -- Flannery O'Connor, John Updike, and the writer's "true country" / Avis Hewitt -- Flannery O'Connor : critical reception / Irwin H. Streight -- Flannery O'Connor and the art of the holy / Arthur F. Kinney -- Flannery O'Connor's "spoiled prophet" / T.W. Hendricks -- Flannery O'Connor's misfit and the mystery of evil / John Desmond -- "Wingless chickens" : "Good country people" and the seduction of nihilism / Henry T. Edmondson III -- "Through our laughter we are involved" : Bergsonian humor in Flannery O'Connor's fiction / J.P. Steed -- Carnival in the "temple" : Flannery O'Connor's dialogic parable of artistic vocation / Denise T. Askin -- Flannery O'Connor's empowered women / Peter A. Smith -- The domestic dynamics of Flannery O'Connor : everything that rises must converge / Bryant N. Wyatt -- "The artificial nigger" and the redemptive quality of suffering / Richard Giannone -- Wise blood : O'Connor's romance of alienation / Ronald Emerick -- From manners to mystery : Flannery O'Connor's titles / Marie Lienard -- Called to the beautiful : the incarnational art of Flannery O'Connor's The violent bear it away / Christina Bieber.