Edited by Bonnie Lander Johnson and Julia Meszaros
In the English-speaking world, the Catholic Literary Revival is typically associated with the work of G. K. Chesterton/Hilaire Belloc, Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene. But in fact the Revival’s most numerous members were women. While some of these women remain well known⎯Muriel Spark, Antonia White, Flannery O’Connor, Dorothy Day – many have been almost entirely forgotten. They include: Enid Dinnis, Anna Hanson Dorsey, Alice Thomas Ellis, Eleanor Farjeon, Rumer Godden, Caroline Gordon, Clotilde Graves, Caryll Houselander, Sheila Kaye-Smith, Jane Lane, Marie Belloc Lowndes, Alice Meynell, Kathleen Raine, Pearl Mary Teresa Richards, Edith Sitwell, Gladys Bronwyn Stern, Josephine Ward, and Maisie Ward.There are various reasons why each of these writers fell out of print: changes in the commercial publishing world after World War II, changes within the Church itself and in the English-speaking universities that redefined the literary canon in the last decades of the 20th century. Yet it remains puzzling that a body of writing so creative, so attuned to its historical moment, and so unique in its perspective on the human condition, should have fallen into obscurity for so long.Edited by Bonnie Lander Johnson and Julia Meszaros, the Catholic Women Writers series brings together the English-language prose works of Catholic women from the 19th and 20th centuries; work that is of interest to a broad range of readers. Each volume is printed with an accessible but scholarly introduction by theologians and literary specialists. The first volume in the series is Caryll Houselander’s The Dry Wood. Houselander is known primarily for her spiritual writings but she also wrote one novel, set in a post-war London Docklands parish. There a motley group of lost souls are mourning the death of their saintly priest and hoping for the miraculous healing of a vulnerable child whose gentleness in the face of suffering brings conversion to them all in surprising and unexpected ways. The Dry Wood offers a vital contribution to the modern literary canon and a profound meditation on the purpose of human suffering.
Future Volumes:
Carmen Laforet, The New Woman
Ann Scott Moncrieff, Selected Short Stories
Josephine Ward, Tudor Sunrise
Rosa Mulholland, Marcella Grace
Alice Thomas Ellis, The 27th Kingdom
About the Editors:
Bonnie Lander Johnson
Bonnie Lander Johnson (DPhil, Oxon)is Fellow and Director of Studies at Newnham College, Cambridge University. She teaches English literature from all historical period but writes mainly on Shakespeare and the Reniassance, with a focus on the history of science and religion. She is the author of Chastity in Early Stuart Literature and Culture (Cambridge UP, 2015) and the editor of Blood Matters (UPenn) and The Cambridge Handbook of Literature and Plants. With Julia Meszaros, she writes about the Catholic Literary Revival, especially its women.
Julia Meszaros
Julia Meszaros received her DPhil in Theology and Literature from Oxford in the same year as Lander Johnson. She spent four years as a post-doctoral researcher at KU Leuven and now lectures at St Patrick’s College, Maynooth. She is the author of Selfless Love and Human Flourishing in Paul Tillich and Iris Murdoch (Oxford UP, 2016) and the editor of Sacrifice and Modern Thought (Oxford UP, 2013).
Advisory Committee:
Ken Parker (Duquesne University)
Michael Hurley (University of Cambridge)
Andrew Meszaros (St Patrick’s Pontifical University)
Alana Harris (Kings College London)
David Deavel (University of St Thomas)
Rebekah Lamb (University of St Andrews)
Praise for the Catholic Women Writers series
“The Catholic Literary Revival that began in the late nineteenth century includes towering and well-known figures such as Chesterton, Greene, Tolkien, and Waugh, but its most numerous members were women whose literary contributions have been unjustly neglected and largely forgotten. In this important new series on Catholic women writers of the past two centuries, Johnson and Meszaros provide a welcome opportunity for us to gain a deeper appreciation of the contributions of Catholic women to the literary arts. I am truly grateful to these editors for rescuing these works from obscurity and bringing them back to our attention.” —Jennifer A. Frey, University of South Carolina, and host of the literature, philosophy, and theology podcast Sacred and Profane Love
“The Catholic Women Writers series adds immeasurably to scholarship about women’s writing, the novel, book history, and religious experience. To be modern is not inevitably to be godless or to write novels about a world abandoned by God. The novels reissued in this series widen our knowledge of the spiritual dimensions of women’s lives and experience.” —Allan Hepburn, McGill University
“This new series edited by Julia Meszaros and Bonnie Lander Johnson is both redress and invitation: redress in that there seems to be insufficient reason why writers of the Catholic Revival such as Maisie Ward, Sheila Kaye-Smith, Caryll Houselander, and a host of others have suffered an eclipse justified neither by their literary merits nor by the range of their fiction and non-fiction; invitation in that it is only by the re-publication of their work long out of print that a reader may come to see perspectives and thematics that are original and fresh and add to the contributions of the Catholic Revival’s male stalwarts.” —Cyril O’Regan, University of Notre Dame
“This is a wonderful publishing initiative. The novel allowed Catholic women writers space and freedom to present nuanced accounts of their world and their faith during this formative period for English letters.” —Janet Soskice, Duke University
“This series fills a significant gap. Modern women writers of deeply formed Catholic conviction, despite the equal, and sometimes greater, subtlety and insight of their work, have often been overshadowed by male counterparts.. It is a great gift to have the works of Catholic Women Writers available for renewed study and enlightenment.” —Rowan Williams
God's Fairy Tales, Mystics All, and Once Upon Eternity
by Enid Dinnis
Introduction by Julia Meszaros and Bonnie Lander Johnson
Price: $29.95
ISBN: 9780813237015
Pub Date: November 22nd, 2024
Format: Paperback
Gathered here for the first time are the stories of Enid Dinnis, who lived and wrote in London throughout the first half of the 20th century. Enid Dinnis moved widely in the London literary world but...
Give Them Stones follows Martha Murtagh’s life in Belfast during the Troubles. A working-class Catholic wife and mother, Martha struggles to find work and safe shelter for her children amid growing...
Introduction by Julia Meszaros and Bonnie Lander Johnson
Price: $24.95
ISBN: 9780813236025
Pub Date: August 25th, 2023
Format: Paperback
The Catholic University of America Press is pleased to continue to present new volumes in our Catholic Women Writers series, which will shed new light on prose work of Catholic women writers from the...
The Catholic University of America Press is pleased to present the second volume in our Catholic Women Writers series, which will attempt to bring new attention to prose work of Catholic women writers...
In the English-speaking world, the Catholic Literary Revival is typically associated with the work of G. K. Chesterton/Hilaire Belloc, Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene. But in fact the Revival’s most...
