Betty Hester

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Hazel Elizabeth "Betty" Hester (born 1922 or 1923; died December 26, 1998[1]) was an American correspondent of influential twentieth-century writers, including Flannery O'Connor and Iris Murdoch.[2] Hester wrote several short stories, poems, diaries, and philosophical essays, none of which were published.[3]

Biography

Hester was born in Rome, Georgia and attended Young Harris College.[2] She served in the U.S. Air Force in Wiesbaden, Germany, shortly after World War II (c. 1948–53).[1] She was dishonorably discharged for having an illicit sexual affair with a woman.[1][4] After her dishonorable discharge from the Air Force,[5] she moved to Atlanta.[1] Hester spent most of her life in a small Midtown Atlanta apartment.[3] She worked for Atlanta-based Retail Credit Company, commuting every day by bus.[2][1] She struggled with alcoholism and bouts of depression.[citation needed] She was also a lesbian, which she only admitted to her closest friends.[1]

Hester is best known for her nine-year correspondence and friendship with Southern fiction writer Flannery O'Connor.[5] Between 1955 and 1964, Hester and O'Connor exchanged nearly 300 letters, some of which are published in Sally Fitzgerald's 1979 compilation of O'Connor's correspondence, The Habit of Being.[3] Hester, a very private and reclusive woman, asked that her identity be kept secret in the published letters; thus, she appears as "A".[3][6]

Hester first wrote to O'Connor in July 1955,[7] when O'Connor was working on her second novel, The Violent Bear it Away.[8][3] Eager to exchange thoughts and ideas with someone of equal intellectual caliber, O'Connor wrote back, "I would like to know who this is who understands my stories."[7] O'Connor felt that she and Hester shared a spiritual kinship,[7] and O'Connor would later become Hester's confirmation sponsor in the Catholic Church.[9] Hester left the Church in 1961[10] and turned to agnosticism.[citation needed] This news was a grave disappointment for O'Connor,[11] who had engaged Hester in theological dialogues and tried to sustain her friend's faith.[citation needed]

Hester gave her letters to Emory University in 1987 on the condition that they be sealed for twenty years.[3] They were released to the public on May 12, 2007.[2]

Hester died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on December 26, 1998, at the age of 75.[1]

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Köhler, Nicholas (May 10, 2016). "The Mysterious Letter Writer Who Beguiled Flannery O'Connor and Iris Murdoch". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on May 12, 2016. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |dead-url= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  2. ^ a b c d Tagami, Kirsten (May 10, 2007). "Flannery O'Connor Letters Going Public". Arts. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Archived from the original on May 15, 2007. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |dead-url= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  3. ^ a b c d e f Young, Alec T. (Autumn 2007). "Flannery's Friend: Emory Unseals Letters from O'Connor to Longtime Correspondent Betty Hester". Emory Magazine. Archived from the original on September 26, 2015. Retrieved May 15, 2016. {{cite magazine}}: Unknown parameter |dead-url= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  4. ^ Williams, Joy (February 26, 2009). "Stranger Than Paradise". Sunday Book Review. The New York Times. Archived from the original on November 4, 2015. Retrieved May 15, 2016. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |dead-url= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  5. ^ a b Enniss, Steve (May 12, 2007). "Flannery O'Connor's Private Life Revealed in Letters" (Interview). Interviewed by Jacki Lyden. Archived from the original on May 9, 2016. Retrieved May 13, 2016. {{cite interview}}: Unknown parameter |dead-url= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |program= ignored (help)
  6. ^ O'Connor 1979, p. 89.
  7. ^ a b c O'Connor 1979, p. 90.
  8. ^ O'Connor 1979, p. 315: "Soon after New Year's Day, 1959, Flannery completed the first draft of her second novel, The Violent Bear It Away, on which she had been working for seven years."
  9. ^ O'Connor 1979, p. 154: "I'll be real pleased to be your sponsor for Confirmation—that is, if I read that right and am not just inviting myself."
  10. ^ O'Connor 1979, p. 451.
  11. ^ O'Connor 1979, p. 451: "I don't know anything that could grieve us here like this news. I know that what you do you do because you think it is right, and I don't think any the less of you outside the Church than in it, but what is painful is the realization that this means a narrowing of life for you and a lessening of the desire for life."

Works cited

Further reading

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