The Long Loneliness by Dorothy Day

The Long Loneliness by Dorothy Day

When Dorothy Day died in 1980, the New York Times eulogized her as "a nonviolent social radical of luminous personality . . . founder of the Catholic Worker Movement and leader for more than fifty years in numerous battles of social justice." Here, in her own words, this remarkable woman tells of her early life as a young journalist in the crucible of Greenwich Village political and literary thought in the 1920s, and of her momentous conversion to Catholicism that meant the end of a Bohemian lifestyle and common-law marriage.

The Long Loneliness chronilces Dorothy Day's lifelong association with Peter Maurin and the genesis of the Catholic Worker Movement. Unstinting in her commitment to peace, nonviolence, racial justice, and the cuase of the poor and the outcast, she became an inspiration to such activists as Thomas Merton, Michael Harrinton, Daniel Berrigan, Ceasr Chavez, and countless others.

This edition of The Long Loneliness begins with an eloquent introduction by Robert Coles, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and longtime friend, admirer, and biographer of Dorothy Day.

Dorothy Day was an American journalist, social crusader, and fervent Catholic convert who lived from 1897 to 1980. She founded the Catholic Worker in 1933 with Peter Maurin, a community dedicated to direct relief for the poor and homeless, solidarity with the dispossessed, and social transformation. Day took part in labor fights in the 1930s, the Civil Rights movement, and nonviolent, pacifist opposition to militarism in WWII, Vietnam, and the Cold War, and her claim for canonization in the Catholic Church is still pending. Robert Ellsberg was a member of Dorothy Day's Catholic Worker community in New York City for the last five years of her life (1975-80), serving as managing editor of The Catholic Worker for two years. He is also the author of All Saints and the editor of Dorothy Day: Collected Writings and All the Way to Heaven: Dorothy Day's Selected Letters.