The Reed of God is an inspirational classic written by a British Roman Catholic ecclesiastical artist, Caryll Houselander. This book contains a beautiful meditation on Mary, Mother of God and so much more. Reading this book will bring you closer to Our Blessed Mother, and hence, to Christ Himself. Filled with lyrical prose and touching analogies, the author shows how Mary was the "Reed of God" and that we are all vessels waiting to do God's work, and carrying Christ within us.

Shaped around the writings of Caryll Houselander, A Child in Winter is a daybook for Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany. If you are familiar with Houselander's poetic grace, you will recognize her spirit of awe and abandonment to God. If you are new to her legacy, you will be drawn to her heart and eye for God's goodness and beauty that is artfully captured here.A Child in Winter is a faithful companion as you watch in Advent and grow large with the presence of God through Christmas and Epiphany.You will enter these holy seasons with an increased faith, renewed joy, and the promise of transformation and fulfillment.

In the English-speaking world, the Catholic Literary Revival is typically associated with the work of G. K. Chesterton/Hilaire Belloc, Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene. But in fact the Revival’s most numerous members were women. While some of these women remain well known⎯Muriel Spark, Antonia White, Flannery O’Connor, Dorothy Day - many have been almost entirely forgotten. They include: Enid Dinnis, Anna Hanson Dorsey, Alice Thomas Ellis, Eleanor Farjeon, Rumer Godden, Caroline Gordon, Clotilde Graves, Caryll Houselander, Sheila Kaye-Smith, Jane Lane, Marie Belloc Lowndes, Alice Meynell, Kathleen Raine, Pearl Mary Teresa Richards, Edith Sitwell, Gladys Bronwyn Stern, Josephine Ward, and Maisie Ward. There are various reasons why each of these writers fell out of print: changes in the commercial publishing world after World War II, changes within the Church itself and in the English-speaking universities that redefined the literary canon in the last decades of the 20th century. Yet it remains puzzling that a body of writing so creative, so attuned to its historical moment, and so unique in its perspective on the human condition, should have fallen into obscurity for so long. The Catholic Women Writers series brings together the English-language prose works of Catholic women from the 19th and 20th centuries; work that is of interest to a broad range of readers. Each volume is printed with an accessible but scholarly introduction by theologians and literary specialists. The first volume in the series is Caryll Houselander’s The Dry Wood. Houselander is known primarily for her spiritual writings but she also wrote one novel, set in a post-war London Docklands parish. There a motley group of lost souls are mourning the death of their saintly priest and hoping for the miraculous healing of a vulnerable child whose gentleness in the face of suffering brings conversion to them all in surprising and unexpected ways. The Dry Wood offers a vital contribution to the modern literary canon and a profound meditation on the purpose of human suffering.

Originally published in 1941, this book by the renowned British mystic and spiritual writer Caryll Houselander is once again new as modern readers learn from Houselander's encouragement of her compatriots to view their experience of World War II through the lens of Christ's passion. Writing with the intensity and immediacy of life in London during the blitz, Houselander's thought-provoking reflections continue to speak to believers today about the complex challenge they face to find Christ in the midst of the War on Terror. Writing in the tradition of Julian of Norwich, Catherine of Siena, and Teresa of Avila, Houselander's words resonate with Christians today regardless of their perspective on theology and the Church.

“I was received into the church,” states Caryll Houselander at the very beginning of this work “when I was six years old. Strictly speaking, therefore, I am not a ‘cradle’ Catholic, but a rocking-horse Catholic.” This autobiography, first published in 1955, takes the reader from the author’s Catholic childhood and school days through a period outside the church while she tried to make her living as an artist, to a return to the church. This return was brought about by her insight, so central to all her books into the presence of Christ and others. A theologian in every sense of the word except the formal academic one, Caryll Houselander understood the central importance of one’s image or concept of God. “Caryll Houselander: artist, odd ball, mystic, friend, and in the end, suffering servant. In the midst of her last illness, she clung to life, loved life with a passion that did not want to die. ‘I honestly long,’ she said, ‘to be told ‘a hundred percent cure’ and to return to this life and celebrate it with gramophone records, giggling and gin.’”—Mitch Finley, Our Sunday Visitor As a classic in spirituality, the work of Caryll Houselander is very close to the top of the list.

Twelve lessons focus on important teachings of the Catholic faith, including our relationship with God, the consequences of sin, and events in the life of Jesus.

In The Way of the Cross, Caryll Houselander accomplishes two things: first, by her imaginative re-creation of the Passion and Death of Our Lord, realized with intensity, detail, and depth, she brings a drama of anguish and tragedy to our immediate awareness; secondly, she shows us the Passion reflected in all human suffering. We can no more be detached spectators of the Passion than we can be detached spectators of the griefs and travails of the contemporary world. As Caryll Houselander writes, the part we are called to play is that of Veronica, coming forward to wipe the tears and sorrows from every stricken face we meet. And each time we have the courage and compassion to do so, we find the same image left on the veil. These profound meditations on the Stations of the Cross allow the reader to walk in the footsteps of Christ on that distant yet ever-present Good Friday.

Although forgotten until quite recently, Caryll Houselander, who died in 1954, was a sensitive and profound English Roman Catholic writer on Christian spirituality. In this critical edition of her 1949 book The Passion of the Infant Christ, Houselander argues that the physical world is an "inscaped" revelation of the mind of the Creator. Every concrete object and every temporal event mirrors the eternal, just as the circumstances surrounding the birth of Jesus mirror the circumstances surrounding his death and resurrection. Editor Kerry Walters discusses both Houselander's life and the primary themes of The Passion of the Infant Christ in his introduction to this critical edition of one of Houselander's most insightful books.