Presbyterian Critic

Hough, Lynn Harold, Dr. THE ARTIST AND THE CRITIC, New York: The Abingdon Press, 1930

First Edition. Hardcover, brown boards, 214 pages,VERY GOOD/VERY GOOD with some wear and chipping to dj. Dr. Hough was born in Cadiz, Ohio, in 1877. In 1898 he received a B.A. degree in Arts from Scio College; in 1905 he received the Bachelor's degree in Divinity from Drew Theological Seminary, and later with the reception of his thesis, the Doctor's degree in Theology, in course, from the same in stitution. From 1920 - 28 he was pastor of the Central Methodist Church in Detroit, and in 1928 became minister of the American Presbyterian Church of the United Church of Canada in Montreal.

[SW: EURIPIDES, ARTIST, LUCIAN, CRITIC, LITERATURE, DANTE, CRITICISM, DIVINITY, THEOLOGY, METHODIST CHURCH, UNITED MONTREAL, DETROIT, CANADA, ARTIST RELIGION LITERARY CRITICISM]

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Adams, Daniel J.. THOMAS MERTON'S SHARED CONTEMPLATION: A PROTESTANT PERSPECTIVE. Cistercian Studies Series: Number 62. [Foreword By Brother Patrick Hart]. Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, Inc., 1979
8vo - over 7¾" - 9" 0-87907-862-6 First edition. 8vo (5 3/4" x 8 3/4"). 361, [2] pages. Beige cloth-covered boards, gilt spine lettering (hardcover binding). Chapter notes. Bibliography. Not indexed. Book weighs 1 lb., 5 oz.<p>CONDITION: Dust jacket slightly scuffed, else Fine book, clean and bright, in Near Fine dust jacket.<p>"No modern Christian was more convinced of the dynamic relationship between contemplation and action than was Thomas Merton. As a cloistered monk, a priest, a student of the Church Fathers, a writer, a poet, and a social critic, he knew from his own experience that the Christian cannot be either a contemplative or an activist. He must be both.<p>'The whole problem of our time,' he once wrote, 'is the problem of love; how are we going to recover the ability to love ourselves and to love one another?...Lonely and helpless, we cannot be at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we cannot be at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God.'<p>Merton discerned here not 'a Catholic problem,' contends Daniel J. Adams, but a Christian and a human predicament. Approaching Merton from a background traditionally wary of monasticism and mysticism, the formative elements of Merton's mature life, Adams explores the development of Merton's thought in the light of his personal odyssey from sophisticated wordling to Cistercian monk to social critic and hermit, showing throughout the complementarity of solitude and sharing, of action and contemplation."- From rear panel of dust jacket.<p>About The Author: Daniel J. Adams was an ordained minister of the United Presbyterian Church in the USA, and had served congregations in Iowa and Wisconsin..

First Edition, Hard Cover With Dust Jacket, Fine Book/In Near Fine Dust Jacket

[SW: PHILOSOPHY * CISTERCIANS * RELIGION * CATHOLIC CHURCH * CHURCH HISTORY * THOMAS MERTON * MONASTICISM * CONTEMPLATION,]

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Goldman, P. ; Taylor, B. ; Ashmolean Museum. Retrospective Adventures : Forrest Reid - Author and Collector. Scolar Press in association with Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, Aldershot, first edition, 1998.
From the blurb: "Forrest Reid (1875-1947) was a novelist, critic, autobiographer and collector. A foray into the family attic, and its half-forgotten stacks of Victorian serial magazines, stimulated a passionate interest in print history. He became a distinguished book and print collector, eventually writing a definitive work on the book illustrators of the eighteen sixties. Reid was born into the Presbyterian middle class in Belfast. He lived in suburban Belfast throughout his life, setting all his novels in that milieu, on the shores of County Down and amid the Mourne Mountains but a strong reaction against religious orthodoxy and a growing awareness of his homosexuality cast him as an outsider in that society. His strenuously literary education, as well as support from other writers such as Walter de la Mare and E.M.Forster. Refined extreme sensitivity and a degree of shyness into self-conscious aestheticism partly supported and expressed through select male friendships. In his Action and the two volumes of autobiography, Reid constantly returned to the theme of boyhood, always, it seemed, seeking a more perfect expression of that lost world. His life-story shapes his novels: memories of childhood and a sense of a land of lost content, lost forever yet attainable, or at least approachable, through the power of literature to invoke the appearances of the past. Retrospective Adventures is published to coincide with the first public exhibition of a major part of Reid's collection of illustrations now housed at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and includes 40 pictures from that exhibition. The essays skilfully draw together the many elements of Reid's life to present a fuller picture of a man who had considerable influence in literary life and who pioneered research into Victorian book and periodical illustration."

Illustrated wrappers, 4to, 29 cm, xi, 98 pp, ills. Very Good. 185444008X

[SW: REID. F.wykbooks 11512 Reid, Forrest, 1875-1947 -- Art collections -- Exhibitions. Reid, Forrest, 1875-1947 -- Library. Reid, Forrest, 1875-1947 -- Criticism and interpretation. Reid, Forrest, 1875-1947 -- Exhibitions. Illustration of books -- 19th century -- Exhibitions. Illustration of books -- Great Britain -- Exhibitions. Prints -- Private collections -- Great Britain -- Exhibitions. Artists -- Great Britain -- Biography. Authors, English -- 20th century -- Biography. Book illustration - British Isles - 19th century - Exhibitions. Book illustration - British Isles - Private collections. Book illustration - Private collections - British Isles. Reid, Forrest;Goldman, Paul;Taylor, Brian;Ashmolean, Museum]

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Spark, Muriel: Curriculum Vitae - Autobiography, Boston Houghton Mifflin Company 1993
ISBN: 0-395-65372-X Fine in Fine Dust Jacket Dust Jacket Design By Mark Caleb

The author's life up to the publication of her first book "The Comforters" [1957]. Told in the typical style of wit and intelligence, perception and malice, for which the author is famous. 222pp + 12pp glossy monochrome plates. Black quarter-cloth, black paper boards, gilt spine lettering, beige and white mottled endpapers, deckled fore-edge. Dust jacket price 22.95. SIGNED BY AUTHOR to first blank page. "Muriel Spark, born in Edinburgh on February 1, 1918, is one of the most important Scottish writers of the late-twentieth century. Her body of writing is distinctive by virtue of the range of genres at which she excels: Novelist, Poet, Story Writer, Playwright, Children's Writer, Literary Critic, Biographer, Autobiographer, Editor. Spark's writing style is almost inimical to representational or realist techniques. During the 1950s, when the prevailing mode of British fiction was realist, her tendency towards non-naturalistic writing was unusual and innovative. The bizarre, comic and grotesque turns of fate which abound in Spark's fiction, together with violent crime or untimely death, render the plots of her novels ideal dramatic material for television and film. A distinctive feature of her fiction is its simultaneous appeal, in book or media forms, as popular entertainment and the interest that it attracts from academic scholars and critics through its serious exploration of philosophical and metaphysical issues. Throughout her entire career, Spark has been preoccupied with the transformative effects of fiction. Her fascination with truths and lies is continually revealed in her use of writers, artist figures, storytellers, film directors and media-managers as characters in her novels.The plots of these novels, though different in emphasis, all suggest Spark's fascination with self-deception and the brittleness of character that it implies. Many of her characters live in a state of social, psychological and spiritual 'deadness'; even if they are not literally dead, they are as good as dead. The novels also demonstrate Spark's characteristic use of flash-back and flash-forward, strategies which undermine suspense and narrative resolution. This non-chronological mode of writing strengthens the notion, an emerging truth in Spark's work, that human weakness and corruption are intrinsic and timeless. The importance of telling your own story without self-glorification and, conversely, the importance of refraining from 'scripting' or distorting the stories of others, strengthens as a theme in Spark's novels. For a novelist who is concerned with story-telling this could be dangerous territory, possibly leading to writer's block. Spark, however, acknowledges that the writer cannot avoid contributing to the formative effects of the written word, and concedes that 'much of my literary composition is based on the nevertheless idea'. In keeping with this 'nevertheless principle', she continues to write. Moreover, her fiction is never explicitly didactic. The moral heart of her work is indicated with wit and comedy and leaves the reader to evaluate its meanings as he or she sees fit. Muriel Spark has received many international awards and honours throughout her long career as a writer. In 1993 she was made a Dame of the British Empire and in 1997 she received the David Cohen British Literature prize for a life-time's achievement. She has also been elected a Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature and is an Honorary Member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In France she has been appointed Commandeur de L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (1996) and in the USA she has received the Ingersoll Foundation's T. S. Eliot Award and honorary membership of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Dame Muriel Spark certainly warrants being addressed as a major 'woman of letters' of the twentieth century." - Val Scullion, Open University. "Spark's enchanting memoir flickers with the tart judgments, gimlet wit, bizarre episodes and odd twists of fate that distinguish her fiction. Born in 1918 to a Scottish Jewish engineer father and an English Presbyterian mother full of superstitions and presentiments, she ended her fairly idyllic Edinburgh girlhood by marrying, at age 19, a teacher 13 years her senior. She followed him to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), but he turned out to be unstable, given to violent fits and fond of shooting the revolver he always carried. Divorcing him, she returned to England with her son and took a job working with German POWs to wage psychological warfare against the Nazis by releasing false news stories about German opposition to Hitler. Spark settles literary scores in this memoir, which ends in 1957 with the publication of her first novel, 'The Comforters' . She also paints a dynamic picture of Christina Kay, the exuberant schoolteacher who was the prototype for the protagonist of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie." - Publishers Weekly. As new, unread condition with no remainder markings. Signed by Author First Edition Fine Hard Cover 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall

[SW: LITERATURE FIRST EDITIONS BIOGRAPHY]

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