Papers of George Marion O'Donnell (1914-1962)
Biography

George Marion O'Donnell was born January 21, 1914, on the Silver Home Plantation near Midnight, Mississippi. Upon graduating from the Belzoni, Mississippi, high school in 1932, he entered Memphis State University. In 1934, he transferred to Vanderbilt University, where he was influenced by several well-known Southern literary figures, including Allen Tate, Cleanth Brooks, and Andrew Lytle. He received a Bachelor of Arts in English from Vanderbilt in 1936 and continued his graduate studies there, receiving the Master of Arts in 1939.

Having completed his studies, O'Donnell embarked upon a career as a college English professor and writer. As a teacher, he specialized in modern literature and creative writing, but also taught a variety of classes ranging from freshman composition to world literature, arts, and philosophy. He spent 1939-40 at Vanderbilt as a fellow in creative writing. From 1941 to 1945, he taught at Alabama Polytechnic Institute (now Auburn University), then served as a guest instructor at Harvard University from 1945 to 1947. After two years as an assistant professor at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, O'Donnell was appointed to a professorship at Oglethorpe University near Atlanta, Georgia, where he taught from 1947 to 1957.

During his career, O'Donnell's literary criticism, reviews, short stories, and poetry appeared in over thirty scholarly journals, popular and literary magazines, and anthologies, including New Yorker, Harper's Bazaar, A Southern Vanguard (Prentice-Hall, 1947) and the Agrarian symposium Who Owns America? (Houghton-Mifflin, 1936). He was particularly noted for his essays on William Faulkner and for his poetry.

After spending 1957 to 1959 on leave in New Haven, Connecticut, O'Donnell resigned from Oglethorpe and made New Haven his home, ostensibly to pursue his writing full time. In reality, he suffered from manic depression and alcoholism and had entered a period of decline that resulted in his death in 1962, just prior to his 48th birthday.

From approximately 1943 until his death, O'Donnell had as his companion Gordon Roysce Smith, Jr. Smith was born in Dothan, Alabama, in 1924. He was studying at Alabama Polytechnic Institute in 1942-43 when he met O'Donnell, who was on the faculty at that time. After serving in the United States Navy as a quartermaster aboard a submarine from 1944-46, Smith joined O'Donnell in Baton Rouge and continued his studies at Louisiana State, although he apparently did not receive a degree.

Smith spent most of his post-military career in the book trade. From 1949 to 1957, he worked at Davison-Paxson Booksellers in Atlanta as an assistant buyer. From 1957 to 1971, he managed the book department at the Yale Co-op in New Haven. In 1971-72, he served as Educational Project Director for the American Booksellers Association in New York City. He was subsequently appointed Executive Director of the American Booksellers Association, a post that he held until his retirement in 1984.

From the 1960s to the 1980s, Smith wrote several articles and edited a few publications in the book trade. From 1966 to 1971, he produced and moderated a television talk show, "The Opinionated Man," in New Haven. He also served on the Executive Committee of the New Haven Festival of the Arts from 1959 to 1969 and on the Board of Directors of the Starlight Music Festival from 1964 to 1971. In both Georgia and Connecticut, Smith was active on issues related to censorship.

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