Saints & sinners:

Eric Gill (1882-1940)

British stone carver, wood engraver, essayist and typographer. Convert to the Catholic Church; Dominican tertiary. He was, together with other prominent figures like G. K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc and fr. Vincent McNabb O.P. one of the founders of the Distributist movement. Distributism is an economic and social theory based on Catholic social teaching, regarded as a "third way" between Capitalism and Socialism. It is one of the ideological roots of the Catholic Worker Movement, and has had an indirect influence on the New Economics of E. F. Schumacher and through him on today's Green movement.

"Thus it was that we became Tertiaries of the Order of St. Dominic. We could not go so far as to say that all Christian men and women must, by the simple fact of their being Christians, engage themselves by vow or promise to live according to one or other of the Religious rules, [but]

   as music binds into a strict delight
   the manifold random sounds that beat the air

so a religious astringent must be found to give musical rhyme and reason to the manifold random exuberances of men and women."

~ Eric Gill, Autobiography, 1940

Web links:

Eric Gill Conference and Exhibitions
University of Notre Dame, Indiana, USA
17-19 November 2000

Eric Gill, the Master sculptor of letters

Typographic Visionaries: Eric Gill

Limited Edition Graphics: Eric Gill

Review: Eric Gill's 'An Essay on Typography'

Westminster Cathedral: Eric Gill's Stations of the Cross

Books by or about Eric Gill

Note: If you click on one of our links to iBS, amazon.co.uk or amazon.com (use the latter for quicker delivery to American addressees) to buy a book, the European Council of Lay Dominican Fraternities will receive a small commission on your purchase. However, it would probably be more in Eric Gill's spirit to buy your books from a small local bookshop!

• Eric Gill books from iBS

• A Holy Tradition of Working: Passages from the Writings of Eric Gill"
  From amazon.co.uk

• Servile Labour and Contemplation
  From amazon.co.uk (paperback) or amazon.co.uk (hardcover)

• An Essay on Typography
  From amazon.co.uk or amazon.com

• The Letters of Eric Gill
  From amazon.com

• Autobiography
  From amazon.co.uk (paperback) or amazon.co.uk or amazon.com or amazon.com (hardover editions)

• Shakespeare for Lovers: All of His Romantic Poems
  From amazon.co.uk or amazon.com

• Eric Gill : The Engravings
  From amazon.com

• Eric Gill : The Sculpture
  From amazon.com

• Book of Alphabets for Douglas Cleverdon
  From amazon.co.uk

• Eric Gill for Father Desmond
  From amazon.co.uk (leather bound) or amazon.co.uk (paperback)

• Hague and Gill on Printing
  From amazon.co.uk (paperback) or amazon.co.uk (hardcover)

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