Connell, Evan Shelby, Jr.
Evan Shelby Connell, Jr., 1924–2013, American writer, b. Kansas City, Mo., grad. Univ. of Kansas (B.A., 1947). His first published work, the well-regarded The Anatomy Lesson and Other Stories (1957), was followed by his best-known and most critically acclaimed novel, Mrs. Bridge (1959). Portraying the banal and conformist life, emotional repression, inward despairs, and essential pathos of a conventional upper-class wife in Connell's hometown, the novel became a classic of postwar American fiction. The story of her rigid, lawyer husband was told a decade later in Mr. Bridge (1969), and the two were combined in the film Mr. and Mrs. Bridge (1990). Connell's other novels include the semiautobiographical The Patriot (1960), The Diary of a Rapist (1966), The Connoisseur (1974), The Alchemist's Journal (1991), and Deus Io Volt! (2000). He also wrote Son of the Morning Star (1984), a vivid account of Custer's last stand at the Little Bighorn, a biography of Goya (2004), and essays, poetry, and other short-stories., e.g., Lost in Uttar Pradesh (2008).