Description
From Lao–tse and the Buddha, St.
Anthony and the early Celtic hermits, through Rousseau, Thoreau, Ruskin, and up to the present day, certain gifted persons have shown a vocation for living alone and apart, finding in simplicity and attention to nature a spiritual space to be explored and rejoiced in.
Others, retreating from the world in scorn or cut off from it by scandal, have found that solitude is Hell, a pit of melancholy and morbid fancy.
In this, her first work of nonfiction, novelist Isabel Colegate gives us the lives of the solitaries — male and female, medieval and modern, divinely inspired and patently fraudulent.
But this is no mere gallery of saints and sinners, poets and misanthropes.
It is also a reevaluation of solitude for our times, and a reminder that it is in solitude that the soul meets itself, refreshes itself, and from there goes out to join the communal dance.
Product Details
| Publisher | Counterpoint |
| Publish Date | June 15, 2010 |
| Pages | 304 |
| Language | English |
| Type |  Paperback / softback |
| EAN/UPC | 9781582435916 |
| Dimensions | 8.3 X 5.5 X 0.8 inches | 0.7 pounds |
About the Author
Reviews
"Few books contain a cast of characters as fascinating as those who populate A Pelican in the Wilderness, Isabel Colegate's charming meander through the history of hermits and solitaries. Elegantly written . . . a small gem of a book." —The Wall Street Journal
"A bright and highly literate study of asceticism in both the East and the West." —Los Angeles Times
"This is a charming book . . . witty and sagacious, entertaining and persuasive. It is not a volume that can be characterized as history or memoir or even a travel book but contains the best elements of all." —The Washington Times
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