A Rocking-Horse Catholic
New York: Sheed & Ward, 1955. First edition. 12 mo. original brown cloth spine lettered in white, original dust jacket. About-fine book, short closed tear to bottom front panel of bright, unclipped dust jacket. An exceptional copy. Item #1352
'THE WORLD'S SORROW, WITH WHICH I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN OBSESSED...IS ONLY A SHADOW CAST BY THE SPREAD ARMS OF THE CRUCIFIED KING"
First edition of Caryll Houselander's autobiography—published shortly after her death in October 1954. Complete with the uncommon original dust jacket—illustrated by Arno after a design by Houselander.
Received into the Catholic Church when she was six years old, Houselander called herself, "strictly speaking, therefore I am not a 'cradle' Catholic but a rocking-horse' Catholic." Together with her essay in the anthology Born Catholics (1954), A Rocking Horse Catholic describes Houselander's young life of constant illness. grinding poverty, and spiritual isolation away from the Church. But Houselander also sustained beatific visions of the Mystical Body of Christ in the "crowds" of people in the streets of London. One day she ecountered the missionaries of the Catholic Evidence Guild in Hyde Park (which "became my only link with the Church; and it became a very strong one") and her reversion to the Church was set in motion.
A concluding Epilogue presents a long poem ("The Birth") that Houselander had given to Frank Sheed: "it links up with what she says of the part played by the Hyde Park speakers of the Catholic Evidence Guild in her return to the Church; and also because it sums up so much of what she is trying to say in the book." A Rocking-Horse Catholic includes two images of the author—a frontispiece portrait of her as a young girl and the rear flap includes a rather ghostly image of the author and reprints a tribute by Msgr. Ronald Knox. Houselander, Knox says, wrote with "a candour as of childhood" and the ability to find just the right word "that left you gasping." Her admirers "are asking God to grant her, in that new life, the peace she gave us here. Not with long faces, though, she would not like that."
Price: $250.00