This inspiring and fascinating memoir, subtitled, The Autobiography of the Legendary Catholic Social Activist, The Long Loneliness is the late Dorothy Day's compelling autobiographical testament to her life of social activism and her spiritual pilgrimage. A founder of the Catholic Worker Movement and longtime associate of Peter Maurin, Dorothy Day was eulogized in the New York Times as, a nonviolent social radical of luminous personality. The Long Loneliness recounts her remarkable journey from the Greenwich Village political and literary scene of the 1920s through her conversion to Catholicism and her lifelong struggle to help bring about the kind of society where it is easier to be good.

How do you follow Jesus without burning out?

Gold Medal Winner, 2018 Illumination Book Awards, Enduring Light

This thoughtful collection of Day's reflections incorporates abundant material for contemplation, all drawn from her extensive writings ... [which] reveal Day's signature honesty and frequent humor in addressing her hopes and fears and the sources of her inspiration.... This welcome compilation provides a window into the fundamental beliefs that undergirded Day's life of faith. --Publishers Weekly, starred review

In this guidebook, Dorothy Day offers hard-earned wisdom and practical advice gained through decades of seeking to know Jesus and to follow his example and teachings in her own life.

Unlike larger collections and biographies, which cover her radical views, exceptional deeds, and amazing life story, this book focuses on a more personal dimension of her life: Where did she receive strength to stay true to her God-given calling despite her own doubts and inadequacies and the demands of an activist life? What was the unquenchable wellspring of her deep faith and her love for humanity?

For almost fifty years, through her tireless service to the poor and her courageous witness for peace, Dorothy Day offered an example of the gospel in action. Now the publication of her diaries, previously sealed for twenty-five years after her death, offers a uniquely intimate portrait of her struggles and concerns.

Beginning in 1934 and ending in 1980, these diaries reflect her response to the vast changes in America, the Church, and the wider world. Day experienced most of the great social movements of her time but, as these diaries reveal, even while she labored for a transformed world, she simultaneously remained grounded in everyday human life: the demands of her extended Catholic worker family; her struggles to be more patient and charitable; the discipline of prayer and worship that structured her days; her efforts to find God in all the tasks and encounters of daily life.

A story of faithful striving for holiness and the radical transformation of the world, Day's life challenges readers to imagine what it would be like to live as if the gospels were true.

The publication of the letters of Dorothy Day is a significant event in the history of Christian spirituality. -Jim Martin, SJ, author of My Life with the Saints Dorothy Day, cofounder of the Catholic Worker movement, has been called the most significant, interesting, and influential person in the history of American Catholicism. Now the publication of her letters, previously sealed for 25 years after her death and meticulously selected by Robert Ellsberg, reveals an extraordinary look at her daily struggles, her hopes, and her unwavering faith. This volume, which extends from the early 1920s until the time of her death in 1980, offers a fascinating chronicle of her response to the vast changes in America, the Church, and the wider world. Set against the backdrop of the Depression, World War II, the Cold War, Vatican II, Vietnam, and the protests of the 1960s and '70s, she corresponded with a wide range of friends, colleagues, family members, and well-known figures such as Thomas Merton, Daniel Berrigan, César Chávez, Allen Ginsberg, Katherine Anne Porter, and Francis Cardinal Spellman, shedding light on the deepest yearnings of her heart. At the same time, the first publication of her early love letters to Forster Batterham highlight her humanity and poignantly dramatize the sacrifices that underlay her vocation. These letters are life-, work-, and faith-affirming. -National Catholic Reporter

Dorothy Day's unpretentious account of the life of St. Th r se of Lisieux sheds light on the depth of Day's Catholic spirituality and illustrates why Th r se's simplicity and humility are so vital for today. Whether you are called to the active life like Day or a more hidden existence like Th r se, you will discover that these paths have much in common and can lead you to a love that has the power to transform you in ways that are unexpected and consequential.

Now back in print, this short biography of St. Th r se of Lisieux by Dorothy Day expresses the surprising yet profound connection between Day--the founder of the Catholic Worker movement who was praised by Pope Francis for her passion for justice and dedication to her faith--and the beloved saint best known for her Little Way.

When Day first read St. Th r se's autobiography, The Story of a Soul in 1928, she called it pious pap. At the time, Day--a social activist who had been living a bohemian lifestyle--had only recently been baptized a Catholic. Some twenty-five years later, Day's perspective on Th r se had so completely changed that she was inspired to write this biography. She did not find it an easy task: Every time I sit down to write that book on the Little Flower I am blocked. . . . I am faced with the humiliating fact that I can write only about myself, a damning fact. But she persisted, and despite numerous rejections eventually found a publisher for it in 1960. She wrote in the Preface: In these days of fear and trembling of what man has wrought on earth in destructiveness and hate, Th r se is the saint we need.

Written originally for nonbelievers or those unaware of Th r se, the book reflects how Day came to appreciate Th r se's Little Way, not as an abstract concept, but as a spirituality that she had already been living. The Catholic Worker, which she cofounded with Peter Maurin, was dedicated to feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless. Day's life, like Th r se's, was filled with all the humble, self-effacing jobs that were a part of this work. She found in Th r se a kindred spirit, one who saw these simple hidden tasks as the way to heaven. We want to grow in love but do not know how. Love is a science, a knowledge, and we lack it, Day wrote.

Just as Day had a conversion of heart about the Little Way, you, too, can be changed by Th r se's simple, yet profound spirituality.

Though Dorothy Day may be best known today for her religious peace activism and her role in founding the Catholic Worker movement, she lived a bohemian youth in the Lower West Side of New York City during the late 1910s and early 1920s. As an editor for radical socialist publications like The Liberator and The Masses, Day was involved in several left-wing causes as well as the Silent Sentinels' 1917 protest for women's suffrage in front of the White House. The Eleventh Virgin is a semi-autobiographical novel told through the eyes of June Henreddy, a young radical journalist whose fictional life closely parallels Day's own life experiences, including her eventual disillusionment with her bohemian lifestyle. Though later derided by Day as a very bad book, The Eleventh Virgin captures a vibrant image of New York's radical counterculture in the early 20th century and sheds a light on the youthful misadventures of a woman who would eventually be praised by Pope Francis for her dream of social justice and the rights of persons during his historic address to a joint session of Congress in 2015.

2023 Reprint of the 1960 edition. Full facsimile of the original edition and not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. Dorothy Day first read the autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux in 1928 as a thirty-year-old convert to Catholicism. Fresh from the radical movements of the day, she found the story of the young saint from the world of the French bourgeoisie colorless, monotonous, and too small for her notice. She wondered what this saint who wrote like a schoolgirl had to offer a world in revolution, a world in need of immediate remedies for the hunger and injustice that abounded in it. Her answer came gradually as over the years she continued to study St. Therese and to reflect on the meaning of her life. The fruit of those years of reflection is Therese.

Therese is not a scholarly biography; it makes no attempt to give an exhaustive portrayal of its subject or to put forward any new interpretation of it. The work is, rather, a personal appraisal of the saint that reveals her to us in a way that more ambitious works have failed to do. We get, for example, a clear picture of what has too often been neglected in the studies of the saint. Specifically, we see her in the context of her family life, the natural setting in which she developed and which remained of such importance to her throughout her life. In Therese the Martin family, instead of remaining a collection of figures in stiff, pietistic attitudes in the background, becomes a group of real people. The deep feeling between Louis and Zelie Martin, the surprising differences in character in Therese's four sisters, the strong bond of love that was the family's unity, the social unrest that was threatening its world-all this is made present to us.

Perhaps the greatest advantage this life of St. Therese has is to be written by a woman deeply concerned to bring the message of the saint to those most in need of it today. The poor, the lonely, the oppressed, the hopeless all the little people whose number is so great in these times when bigness and uniformity are burying the individual person--these are the ones that Dorothy Day is especially concerned to reach with her book.

Dorothy Day's unpretentious account of the life of St. Thérèse of Lisieux sheds light on the depth of Day's Catholic spirituality and illustrates why Thérèse's simplicity and humility are so vital for today. Whether you are called to the active life like Day or a more hidden existence like Thérèse, you will discover that these paths have much in common and can lead you to a love that has the power to transform you in ways that are unexpected and consequential.

This collection of Dorothy Day's On Pilgrimage columns from the 1960s is a chronicle of faith and action. Living among the poor and seeking God in her daily life, Dorothy Day had a special vantage point during this tumultuous decade, marked by the Cuban Revolution, Vatican II, the struggle for Civil Rights, Vietnam protests, and the rise of the United Farmworkers.

Dorothy Day's life among the poor and her witness for peace are widely known. Those familiar with that story know the crucial role she assigned to Peter Maurin (1877-1949) the French peasant who inspired her to found the Catholic Worker. Yet Maurin's life and thinking have remained in the shadows. To convey a fuller sense of his story Day began this biography of Maurin in the 1940s but it remained unpublished--until now. Day provides the most complete and intimate portrait of the man she called an Apostle to the world. in her account Maurin emerges as a true saint and prophet who offers an instructive and healing challenge for our time.

A great many of these notes were not written for publication, but for my own self in moments of trouble and in moments of peace and joy.

Dorothy Day's reflections-written on the fly over five hectic years-reveal not only the beginnings of the Catholic Worker Movement, but the mind of a heroic woman as she responds to the demands of faith.

Now back in print after seventy-five years, House of Hospitality is packed with stories of sacrifice and kindness, strikes and protests, hunger and soup lines, the rough reality of tenement life, and the foul odor of poverty. I do penance through my nose continually, Dorothy wrote.

And yet, as she said, Our lives are made up of little miracles day by day. Dorothy Day and her fellow workers were poor for the poor, as Pope Francis has exhorted, and the early years of this Gospel-driven moment have much to teach us about how we can live, today, with a heart for others. Love and ever more love, Dorothy said, is the only solution to every problem that comes up.

These diary entries written by Dorothy Day in 1948 provide an intimate look into Day's personal life as well as essential background for understanding the Catholic Worker movement, which she founded. In this book, Day writes about all facets of her life. Yet whether describing her visits to her daughter's farm or the writings of the saints, a common theme emerges, namely, the gifts of God's love and our need to respond to them with personal and social transformation. The concerns of the Catholic Worker movement are no less vital in our day: the disenfranchised poor, the benefits of the meaningful work, the significance of family, the dangers of increasing commercialism and secularism, the decline of moral standards, and the importance of faith. Available for the first time since it was originally published, this edition includes a foreword by Michael O. Garvey and an introduction by Mark and Louise Zwick that gives an overview of Day's early life and her commitment to the Catholic worker movement.