Brain Snacks: Tasty Tidbits of Knowledge
Flannery O'Connor was, as she put it, an "innocent" speller. She preferred to spell words as they sounded to her, usually heavily inflected with Southern dialect. You'll find just as many "oncets" in her letters as you will in The Misfit's speech. (Source: O'Connor, Flannery. The Habit of Being. Edited and with an introduction by Sally Fitzgerald. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1979, xiv.)
On writing in dialect, O'Connor once said: "If my characters speak Southern, it's because I do." (Source)
O'Connor was diagnosed with lupus in 1950. Her father had died of the disease, as she eventually would. From 1955 onwards, she was forced to spend the rest of her life on crutches. (Source)
Once she was forced to return to her family home, because of lupus, Flannery O'Connor took up raising peacocks. She soon had a farm full of them. She was also fond of Muscovy ducks, Chinese geese, and one-eyed swans. (Source: O'Connor, Flannery. The Habit of Being. Edited and with an introduction by Sally Fitzgerald. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1979, xvi.)
O'Connor kept peacocks at her farmhouse, Andalusia. Sadly, the Andalusia Foundation wasn't able to take care of the birds, and O'Connor's peacocks are no more. The last peacock died in the late 1980s. (Source)
Being secluded at home, Flannery O'Connor kept in contact with the outside world through a very lively correspondence. Although she corresponded with people to whom she was particularly close, she also got plenty of letters from all kinds of random people, and usually responded to them. One rather unkind critic wrote: "Any crank can write to her and get an answer." (Source: O'Connor, Flannery. The Habit of Being. Edited and with an introduction by Sally Fitzgerald. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1979, xiv.)