Abbey Books

I found the book very interesting as I did not know that Westminster Abbey had funeral effigies. I also found it interesting that the practice had been around for so many years. I enjoyed the book.

Well, I won't waste your time. The bottom line-- is this book is worth buying. Its got great insight on many of Gauguin's paintings, and even discusses his background and influences. A must for any art student, or art buff. Your money will not be wasted! For ten bucks, you'll be buying a book you'll use time and time again. Good luck, and happy book buying!

A reviewer might ask himself about this book as about any other: who would profit from reading HARVARD TO HARVARD and why?

Offhand, I cannot imagine more than a couple of thousand people willing to read HARVARD TO HARVARD without previous knowledge of the once notorious event early in the history namely, "The Boston Heresy Case."

Ideally, readers of Abbot Gabriel Gibbs's new book, HARVARD TO HARVARD will first have read two earlier and more scholarly (or at least journalistic) surveys of the same ground:

-- George B. Pepper: THE BOSTON HERESY CASE in View of the Secularization of Religion -- A Case Study in the Sociology of Religion (1988)
and
-- Gary Potter: AFTER THE BOSTON HERESY CASE (1995).

Does the Boston Heresy Case sound unfamiliar? If so, then conjure up Cambridge, Massachusetts 1940 to 1958. Greater Boston was in some sense America's most Roman Catholic city. From another perspective, however, its jewel was America's greatest center of secular learning: Harvard University with its Radcliffe College for women. And, after nearly three centuries of hostility, the Catholic Church and Harvard University were only just beginning to show respect for each other's hugely different values and world-views.

Avery Dulles, son of Eisenhower's Secretary of State, enters Harvard in 1936, is led through very positive Harvard epiphanies into Roman Catholicism in 1940. With two or three other Catholic laymen he founds The Saint Benedict Center in Cambridge, just outside a main gate into Harvard. Dulles goes off to war as a naval officer. While he is gone his co-founder Mrs Catherine Goddard Clarke and other laymen turn the Center into a pulsing powerhouse of somewhat nostalgic Catholic intellectual life. At war's end the State of Massachusetts grants the Center the power to bestow academic degrees. The GI Bill gives returning service men and women the means to attend Saint Benedict. Prominent young men and women abandon Harvard and Radcliffe for the Center.

They are attracted to the Thursday evening theology lectures by one of the two or three most famous Catholic priests in America, the Jesuit Father Leonard Edward Feeney, who in late 1944 is appointed the Center's first and only chaplain. Ardent young men and women study languages, liturgy and, notably, philosophy with a brilliant Lebanese Catholic professor, Fakhri Maluf. They embed themselves fraternity-like into an affordable two years of excitingly orthodox Catholic mini-renaissance just outside secular Harvard University.

The dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan in August 1945 was widely applauded by Americans as a war-shortening tactic. But it appalled the moral sensibilities of a hundred or more members of the Center. They at once set to work to analyze what was wrong with an America that could unleash such an atrocity. And why was the American Catholic hierarchy not up in arms against this unprecedented slaughter of non-combatants?

Center members appealed unsuccessfully to Pope Pius XII to denounce heresies being taught or tolerated by Catholics in Greater Boston. Archbishop Richard Cushing of Boston in 1948 placed the Center under interdict: Catholics were forbidden to have anything to do with it. Father Feeney was expelled from his Jesuit Order in 1949 and excommunicated from the Catholic Church by Pope Pius XII in 1953. He was reconciled to the Church by act of Pope Paul VI in 1972 and a majority of his young lay followers shortly Feeney soon after.

Much more detail by me would be to provide "spoilers" of the author's own craftsmanlike telling of the story of Saint Benedict Center and how its early moral revulsion from atomic bombing quickly enough led into "the Boston Heresy Case."

Suffice it to say that this was a rocky time of roller coaster ups and downs. Every Sunday afternoon for 7 1/2 years Feeney and scores of adult followers preached their views of salvation in Boston Common, often protected by mounted Boston policemen. Jews and Masons were occasionally singled out as special enemies of Jesus, his mother and the Catholic Church. Then, in 1958, 100 or more Center people (including 12 married couples and their 39 children) decamped into the countryside west of Boston at Still River, a rural part of the town of Harvard. There they created, contrary to Catholic canon law, novel American experiments in vowed monastic living. All the married couples accepted celibacy and their children were then raised by a handful of women who were not their parents. In time the majority of Saint Benedict Center people made their peace with Rome. Some did not. One group, the largest, eventually became Catholic Benedictine monks. Most children, as they grew up, left the Center for the world.

This is the chronicle that is unfolded by Abbot Gabriel Gibbs, who had been virtually "present at the creation" of Saint Benedict Center. HARVARD TO HARVARD is the most recent book-length overview of a story which continues to fascinate such another early participant as theologian and now Cardinal Avery Dulles, as well as students of church history, sociologists, psychologists and researchers into religious utopias. Abbot Gibbs's narrative is clear, peaceable, detailed, only moderately opinionated and amply illustrated. The author tries to be ultra-fair to disagreeing participants and sub-groups in the Center's often controversial experiments in monastic community for both men and women. While not reflexively polemical, neither is the chronicle remotely detached.

Who should read HARVARD TO HARVARD and why? That is hard for me to say. But I hope that you have reason to decide whether enough is now enough with HARVARD TO HARVARD or if you care to pick up the book and read it.

I predict that if you do elect to read this book about Saint Benedict Center, you will enjoy it and will not stop there. Before you know it you will find yourself into other writings: about Christian tolerance and intolerance, the Second Vatican Council, the theological views of Cardinal Avery Dulles and also the rich and still growing learning experiences of the Center and its several offspring scattered across America, including some much sought after schools.
-OOO-

"Haunted Churches & Abbeys of Britain" is a nifty guide for those of us who would actually like to catch sight of a headless monk or two. The author gives directions to the various churches, ruined abbeys, priories, graveyards, and pubs (yes, pubs) in Great Britain that are reputed to be haunted by religious bodies. There are also a few white ladies, haunted clocks, a cockatrice, and several ghostly bears (not just the famous one in the Tower of London) thrown in for good measure. Here are two of the sites that the author describes:

--The haunted clock of Veryan Church in Cornwell is reputed to, "foretell death in the village should it strike on a Sunday morning during the pre-sermon hymn or before the collect against devils at evensong." The unlucky villager thus forewarned will die before the next Sunday. (You may want to visit Veryan on a day other than Sunday).

--King Harold Godwinson (who was buried in Waltham Abbey, Essex) reputedly haunts Battle Abbey (in Sussex). If you are one of those who believe that he was the last true King of England, "go to Battle in Sussex, which stands on the A2100 north of Hastings" and see if you can spot a bloodied figure gazing over the battlefield of Senlac ("Sonlac! Sanguelac, The lake of Blood."). If you visit this 1066 battleground after a rainstorm, you may also see the earth "sweating blood".

The author himself tried to visit as many of the haunted sites as possible, and he writes very readable vignettes on the ghostly throngs that glide over Britain's hallowed ground. If you enjoy reading this book, Marc Anderson has also published "Haunted Inns", "Haunted Castles", and "Phantom Britain".

I used this book the most for my research paper on the unification of Italy. It was the easiest to understand. For all those college students this is the best book to own.

Inexpensively produced with black and white pictures, this book presents Cistercian/Trappist life at St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts. Basil Pennington's text is as clear and telling as the photos themselves. This is an excellent way to begin to understand Trappist life. The chapter called "A Greater Solitude" includes insight into how the community deals with death. The simple acceptance and rejoicing that a brother has persevered to the end and a new beginning make a startling and illuminating contrast to the American way of death. I keep this book on my coffee table so that people who don't understand efforts to combine Cistercian spirituality with daily life will have an quick and easy glimpse of the life.

Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey is the novel that almost wasn't. We know from Cassandra Austen's notes that her sister Jane wrote it during 1798-1799, prepared it for publication in 1803, and sold it to publishers Crosby & Company of London only to never see it in print. It languished on the publisher's shelf for six years until Austen, as perplexed as any authoress who was paid for a manuscript, saw it not published, and then made an ironical inquiry, supposing that by some "extraordinary circumstance" that it had been carelessly lost, offering a replacement. In reply, the publisher claimed no obligation to publish it and sarcastically offered it back if repaid his 10 pounds.

Seven more years pass during which Pride and Prejudice is published in 1813 to much acclaim, followed by Mansfield Park in 1814 and Emma in 1815, all anonymously `by a lady'. With the help of her brother Henry, Austen then buys back the manuscript from Crosby & Company for the same sum, for Crosby could not know this manuscript was written by a now successfully published and respected author and thus worth quite a bit more. Ha! Imagine the manuscript that would later be titled Northanger Abbey and published posthumously in 1818 might never have been available to us today. If its precarious publishing history suggests it lacks merit, I remind readers that ironically in the early 1800's most viewed it as "only a novel", whose premise its author and narrator in turn heartily defend.

"And what are you reading, Miss - ?" "Oh! It is only a novel!" replies the young lady, while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. "It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda"; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language." The Narrator, Chapter 5

If this statement seems a bit over the top, then you have discovered one of the many ironies in Northanger Abbey as Austen pokes fun at the critics who oppose novel writing by cleverly writing a novel, defending writing a novel. Phew! In its simplest form, Northanger Abbey is a parody of the Gothic fiction so popular in Austen's day but considered lowbrow reading and shunned by the literati and critics. In a more expanded view it is so much more than I should attempt to describe in this limited space, but will reveal that it can be read on many different levels of enjoyment; -- for its coming of age story, social observations, historical context, allusions to Gothic novels and literature, beautiful language and satisfying love story.

Some critics consider Northanger Abbey to be Jane Austen's best work revealing both her comedic and intellectual talents at its best. I always enjoy reading it for the shear joy of exuberant young heroine Catherine Morland, charmingly witty hero Henry Tilney and the comedy and social satire of the supporting characters. At times, I do find it a challenge because so much of the plot is based on allusions to other novels, and much of the story is tongue in cheek. Explanatory notes and further study have helped me understand so much more than just the surface story and I would like to recommend that all readers purchase annotated versions of the text for better appreciation.

Oxford World's Classic's has just released their new edition of Northanger Abbey which is worthy of consideration among the other editions in print that include a medium amount of supplemental material to support the text. Also included in this edition are three minor works, Lady Susan, The Watsons and Sandition. Updated and revised in 2003, it has an newly designed cover and contains a short biography of Jane Austen, notes on the text, explanatory notes which are numbered within the text and referenced in the back, chronology, two appendixes of Rank and Social Class and Dancing and a 28 page introduction by Claudia L. Johnson, Prof. of English Literature at Princeton University and well known Austen scholar. Of the five introductions I have read so far in the Oxford Austen series I have enjoyed this one the most as Prof. Johnson style is so entertaining and accessible. She writes with authority and an elegant casualness that does not intimidate this everyman reader. The essay is broken down into a general Introduction, Gothic or Anti-Gothic?, Jane Austen, Irony, and Gothic Style, and Northanger Abbey in Relation to Lady Susan, The Watsons, and Sandition. Here is an excerpt that I thought fitting to support my previous mention of publishing history and tone.

"Northanger Abbey is a sophisticated and densely literary novel, mimicking a great variety of print forms common in Austen's day - conduct of books, miscellanies, sermons, literary reviews, and, of course, novels. Its ambition is fitting, because it was to have marked Austen's entrance into the ranks of print culture. After Austen's earlier attempt to publish a version of Pride and Prejudice failed, Northanger Abbey (then called Susan) seemed to have succeeded, for it sold for a grand total of 10 to Crosby & Company in 1803. We have seen that Austen's entrance into the printed world, unlike Catherine's entrée into the wide world outside Fullerton, was energetically confident: when the narrator declares that novels `have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them' (p. 23), she is clearly referring to her own novel too. This seems an audacious claim when we consider that Austen had yet to publish a novel, and a painful one when we consider that the novel, though bought, paid for, and even advertised, never actually appeared." Page xxv

What I found most enlightening about this edition were the explanatory notes to the text which were also written by Prof. Johnson. Not only do they call attention to words, phrases, places, allusions, and historical meanings, they explain them in context to the character or situation allowing us further inside the though process or action.

115 ponderous chest: the chest is a site of spine-tingling terror and curiosity in novels such as Ann Radcliffe's Romance of the Forrest (1791), where it holds a skeleton (vol, I , ch. iv), and William Godwin's Caleb Williams (1794), where it holds evidence of Falkland's diabolical crime. p. 369.

In addition to being an amusing parody and light hearted romance, I recommend Northanger Abbey for young adult readers who will connect with the heroine Catherine Morland whose first experiences outside her home environment place her in a position to make decisions, judge for herself who is a good or bad friend, and many other life lesson's that we discover again through her eyes. Henry Tilney is considered by many to be Austen's most witty and charming hero and is given some the best dialogue of any of her characters.

"Miss Morland, no one can think more highly of the understanding of women than I do. In my opinion, nature has given them so much that they never find it necessary to use more than half." Henry Tilney, Chapter 14

Luckily for Henry Tilney there was one woman who used all that nature had given her with her writing when she created him. We are so fortunate that Northanger Abbey is not languishing and forgotten on a shelf at Crosby & Company in London, and available in this valuable edition by Oxford Press

Very funny in typical Austin fashion. A must read for any Jane Austin fan. It is a bit difficult to follow the characters and the relationships at first; Once you get to know who the characters are it is easy to appreciate them and their interactions. Austin's version of the Gothic novel.
The Longman edition is very helpful in setting the context for the work. Being relatively new to Austin it was valuable for me to understand the historical setting and read the examples of contemporary authors that this edition provides. I highly recommend this edition for anyone who is not already familiar with the life and times of this period.

I like this book.You can learn concept of data warehousing with book.Example are very good.

Finally, all the mysteries surrounding Steadford Abbey and its ghost are solved. In this culmination of the four-book series, Sheila Rosalynd Allen wraps up the loose ends of her "Ghost" series. "The Passionate Ghost" takes place chronologically one year after "The Helpful Ghost" and again the Abbey is taken over by a new owner. However, the new owner's last name is the same as the resident ghost's and other similar strange connections surface. The book pulls in characters from the previous books and flashes back forty years to tell the story that sets the context.

Again, there are small problems that make this book less than five-star. The romance is lacking; Ms. Allen concentrates more on wrapping up the entire story instead of working out a realistic plot. Other small plot inconsistencies make you sit up and think, "Wait a moment! That's not right!" (i.e., how the heroine knows the ghost's name though she was never told). And the ending is ridiculously abrupt.

On the other hand, "The Passionate Ghost" has Ms. Allen's most compelling opening chapters of any of the books. And the characters stay consistent and likeable throughout the book. The book does nicely wrap up the entire plot and explain most of the questions lingering from the previous books. Overall, it is a satisfactory conclusion to a very fun series.