One of America’s foremost novelists and short-story writers, Flannery O’Connor, 39, died Monday in Milledgeville, where she lived with her mother on their farm, Andalusia. Miss O’Connor had been ill since childhood with a bone ailment, but followed an active career of writing, painting and correspondence with friends in this country and in Europe. She had entered Baldwin County Hospital on the Wednesday before her death. Msgr. Joseph G. Cassidy, P.A., V.G., pastor of Cathedral of Christ the King, Atlanta, offered the Requiem Mass Tuesday in Sacred Heart Church, Milledgeville.

Miss O’Connor was the author of two novels, “Wise Blood,” which appeared in 1952 and has been re-issued, and “The Violent Bear It Away,” which was published in 1960. A collection of short stories, “A Good Man Is Hard To Find,” appeared in 1955 and an additional collection, “Everything that Rises Must Converge” will be published next year. At the time of her death she was working on additional short stories.

She received a Ford Foundation fellowship in creative writing in 1955 and held a grant from the National Institute of Arts and Letters. She won numerous literary prizes, including the Kenyon Fellowship in fiction, and the O. Henry Award and the Brenda Award of the Atlanta Chapter of Theta Sigma Phi, national fraternity for women in journalism.

Mary Flannery O’Connor was born in Savannah, March 25, 1925, the daughter of Regina Cline O’Connor and the late Edward Francis O’Connor. She attended Peabody High School, Milledgeville, received an A.B. degree from Georgia State College for Women (now Women’s College of Georgia, also in Milledgeville) and went on to do graduate studies, earning a Master’s Degree from the State University of Iowa. She also studied at St. Mary’s College of Notre Dame University.

Miss O’Connor’s devout Catholicism had a strong influence on her writing in the view of most critics. Her books and stories were concerned with people of the South, many of them of the type often referred to as “poor white trash.” She was particularly concerned with characters who felt themselves to be “prophets,” compelled to preach, yet in conflict with themselves.