Dawkins, Cecil, 1927-2019

Consists of 8 handwritten and 93 typed letters, most with envelopes, from O'Connor to Cecil Dawkins. Included are a program for the 1963 commencement of Smith College at which O'Connor was awarded a Doctor of Letters degree and a photograph of O'Connor with Thomas Corwin Mendenhall, College President.

"...There is some kind of business at Iowa where Rockefeller money is given away. That Phillopino (sp?) [sic] gentleman I was talking to after the reading had come over from Iowa City and he told me he had Rockerfeller [sic] money to write there..."

"...I'm still struggling with my displeasure over my novel and am unable to make up my mind if I'm finished with it. Meanwhile I make much noise on the typewriter..."

"The sun is greatly restricting my activities right now and will continue to do so, I'm afriad. [sic] The doctor says I can't go out of the house without stockings, gloves, long sleeves and large hat. (Sunlight influences lupus and causes joint symptoms etc.) The spectacle of me in this get up all summer is depressing to my imagination..."

"...Quit worrying about shocking your mother. I have the same problem and I solve it by ignoring it. When you write you have to be free; following your vocation has to be an autonomous activity."

"...The other day she asked me why I didn't try to write something that people liked instead of the kind of thing I do write. Do you think, she said, that you are really using the talent God gave you when you don’t write something that lot, a LOT [sic], of people like?..."

"Catharine Carver thinks my novel should be longer in the middle and I think she is right, so that is what I am fixing to do, make it longer in the middle. It'll probably tkae [sic] me all summer. We expect my editor from Farrar, Straus Monday week. Don't know what I'll do to entertain him. The translator was very easy to amuse and we enjoyed him..."

"...Several teachers came in and one of them said in a knowing voice, 'Miss O'Connor, why is the Misfit's hat black?' I said most countrymen in Georgia wore black hats. He looked crushed..."

"...The title don't do much for it. I can't remember if I told you what Jessie Stuart said to a friend of mine after I had read A Good Man is Hard to Find--at Vanderbilt. [sic] He said he didn't know why I ended it that way..."

"...In this story I get the feeling that you give them qualities which you have decide upon, that you have given them the qualities rather than that the qualities spring naturally out of them. (That sentence is an example of slithering tenses.)..."