The Wisdom of the Desert: Some Sayings of the Desert Fathers.

"They were the first Christian hermits, who abandoned the cities of the pagan world to live in solitude": First edition of Thomas Merton's The Wisdom of the Desert

The Wisdom of the Desert: Some Sayings of the Desert Fathers.

MERTON, Thomas.

Item Number: 96546

New York: New Directions, 1960.

First edition of Merton’s selection of proverbs from the early nomadic Christians of the Egyptian Desert. Octavo, original cloth. Very good in a very good dust jacket.

In 1941, aspiring author Thomas Merton decided to give up a promising literary career in New York to enter the Abbey of Gethsemani, a community of monks belonging to the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (Trappists), the most ascetic Roman Catholic monastic order. From Gethsemani, Merton proceeded to become arguably the most influential American Catholic author of the 20th century. The twenty-seven years he spent in the monastery impelled him into the political arena, where he became, according to Daniel Berrigan, the conscience of the peace movement of the 1960's.

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