{i} family name; Bernard Connor (1666-1698), Irish born English physician; Ralph Connor, Rev. Dr. Charles William Gordon (1860-1937), Canadian novelist and clergyman
born July 18, 1796, Connorville, County Cork, Ire. died Aug. 30, 1855, London, Eng. Irish leader of Chartism. He practiced law and served in the British Parliament (1832-35). He turned to radical agitation in England and was active in the Chartist movement as a popular public speaker. His journal Northern Star (1837) gave his views wide circulation. He became the Chartists' leader in 1841 but was unable to effect passage of the Chartist petition in 1848. After a mental collapse, he was declared insane in 1852
born March 25, 1925, Savannah, Ga., U.S. died Aug. 3, 1964, Milledgeville, Ga. U.S. writer. She spent most of her life on her mother's farm in Milledgeville, Ga. A devout Roman Catholic, she usually set her works in the rural South and often examined the relationship between the individual and God by putting her characters in grotesque and extreme situations. Her first novel, Wise Blood (1952), combines a keen ear for common speech, a caustic religious imagination, and a flair for the absurd that characterized all of her work. With the story collections A Good Man Is Hard to Find (1955) and Everything That Rises Must Converge (1965), she was acclaimed as a master of the form. Her other work of fiction was the novel The Violent Bear It Away (1960). Long crippled by lupus, she died at age
orig. Michael O'Donovan born 1903, Cork, County Cork, Ire. died March 10, 1966, Dublin Irish writer. Brought up in poverty, O'Connor became a librarian and a director of Dublin's Abbey Theatre. He won popularity in the U.S. for short stories in which apparently trivial incidents illuminate Irish life. They appeared in volumes including Guests of the Nation (1931) and Crab Apple Jelly (1944) and in The New Yorker magazine. He also wrote critical studies on Irish life and literature and translations of Gaelic works of the 9th-20th centuries, including the great 17th-century satire The Midnight Court (1945)
born March 25, 1925, Savannah, Ga., U.S. died Aug. 3, 1964, Milledgeville, Ga. U.S. writer. She spent most of her life on her mother's farm in Milledgeville, Ga. A devout Roman Catholic, she usually set her works in the rural South and often examined the relationship between the individual and God by putting her characters in grotesque and extreme situations. Her first novel, Wise Blood (1952), combines a keen ear for common speech, a caustic religious imagination, and a flair for the absurd that characterized all of her work. With the story collections A Good Man Is Hard to Find (1955) and Everything That Rises Must Converge (1965), she was acclaimed as a master of the form. Her other work of fiction was the novel The Violent Bear It Away (1960). Long crippled by lupus, she died at age
American jurist. In 1981 she was appointed the first woman associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. O'Connor Feargus Edward O'Connor Mary Flannery O'Connor Frank O'Connor Sandra Day
orig. Charles William Gordon born Sept. 13, 1860, Indian Lands, Glengarry county, Ont., Can. died Oct. 31, 1937, Winnipeg, Man. Canadian novelist. Ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1890, Connor became a missionary to mining and lumber camps in the Canadian Rocky Mountains; this experience and memories of his childhood in Glengarry, Ont., provided material for his novels, including The Sky Pilot (1899) and The Prospector (1904), which, combining adventure with religious messages and wholesome sentiment, made him the best-selling Canadian novelist of the early 20th century. His best books are considered to be The Man from Glengarry (1901) and Glengarry School Days (1902)
a US judge who became the first woman member of the Supreme Court in 1981 (1930- ). orig. Sandra Day born March 26, 1930, El Paso, Texas, U.S. U.S. jurist. After graduating first in her law school class at Stanford University (1950) she entered private practice in Arizona. She served as an assistant state attorney general (1965-69) before being elected in 1969 to the state senate, where she became the first woman in the U.S. to hold the position of majority leader (1972-74). After serving on the superior court of Maricopa county and the state court of appeals, she was nominated in 1981 by Pres. Ronald Reagan to the Supreme Court of the United States, becoming the first female justice in the court's history. Known for her dispassionate and meticulously researched opinions, she proved to be a moderate and pragmatic conservative who sometimes sided with the court's liberal minority on social issues (e.g., abortion rights)