Flee to the Fields; The Faith and Works of the Catholic Land Movement: A Symposium
London: Heath Cranton Ltd., 1934. FIrst edition. 12 mo. (7 1/2 inches tall), original green cloth, spine and front board lettered in black, original dust jacket. Modest tape stains to blank flyleaves, dust wrapper else very good in an edge-worn dust jacket. Item #1857
"THE CATHOLIC CULTURE OF EUROPE HAS INSTINCTIVELY PRESERVED THE PEASANT"
First edition of Flee to the Fields—a Depression-era symposium on the "Faith and Works of the Catholic Land Movement"—collecting 10 essays with contributions from Father Vincent McNabb, Harold Robbins, and a Preface by Hilaire Belloc. Complete as published with the valuable original printed dust jacket, Flee to the Fields was part of the publisher's Books of the Countryside series, with a list of titles on the rear panel.
Quoting Pope Pius XI's Quadragesimo Anno, the inner flap of the jacket includes an introduction, which is not printed in the book itself. "We venture...to convince all open to conviction that the pioneer Catholic landsmen stand for what the traditional English man and woman have always held dear, for God and their neighbour, home and country, freedom and justice and, as far as it is possible in this world, for 'joy in widest commonalty spread.'"
Following in the footsteps of Cobbett, Southey, Howitt, Ruskin, Morris (and Wordsworth), Belloc's Preface—which predates An Essay on the Restoration of Property (1936)—advocates a Return to the Land to counter "the poisonous effects of industrialization." Blaming the "French Heresiarch, Jean Cauvin, better known in the latinized form of 'Calvin," Belloc contends that "the modern plight of the workingman owes less to industrialization than to the worship of Mammon under Calvinist impulses and a monstrous exploitation of workers and economic inequality, which spread from England to the rest of the world" (Robert Royal). The 10 essays are introduced by a letter ("dal Vaticano") from Eugenio Pacelli, on behalf of Pope Pius XI, commending the five Catholic Land Associations of Great Britain and imparting an Apostolic Blessing. The recipient of the letter, Monsignor James Dey of Oscott, was one of the contributors. An appendix reprints the text of The Birmingham Scheme, which first appeared in 1932 as "a Distributist solution" to Unemployment. Robert Royal. A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century.
Price: $200.00