The Seven Storey Mountain
New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company. Octavo, original white paper boards, cloth spine printed in black, original dust jacket. About-Fine. Item #1441
"AFTER COMMUNION I THOUGHT MY HEART WAS GOING TO EXPLODE"
Handsome edition of The Seven Storey Mountain—Thomas Merton's spiritual autobiography, which "became a best-seller because it was a religious book, not in spite of the fact" (Paul Elie).
"The Seven Storey Mountain was published on October 4, 1948. The occasion passed without acknowledgement in Merton's journal, as it did in the outside world. Three book clubs had opted to offer the book to their members; celebrity Catholics had sent words of praise—Fulton J. Sheen calling it a modern Confessions, Graham Green 'a book one reads with a pencil so as to make it one's own'—but the book did not begin to sell until Christmas-time. Then it began to sell strongly: 31,000 copies in December, 60,000 in January, with 10,000 sold on one singularly lively day. The Seven Storey Mointain was a best-seller, but the New York Times refused to list it as one, on the grounds that it was a religious book, like the Bible" (Paul Elie). The text, divided into three parts, ends with the death of Merton's brother John Paul—eulogized with the poem ("For My Brother: Reported Missing in Action, 1943"). The book concludes with an epilogue ("Meditatio Pauperis in Solitudine"), also in three parts, and an Index. This is almost certainly a facsimile edition, but not the 1951 Garden City Books reprint. The book (vaguely emulating the first-issue white cloth binding) is undated and the dust jacket (with the second-issue captions) is unpriced. Approbations. Dell'Isola. Thomas Merton: A Bibliography, A7; Paul Elie. The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage.
Price: $200.00