Rediscovering Hilaire Belloc in the 21st Century

From Peter Kwasniewski, PhD

Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953) is truly one of the greatest Catholic writers of the 20th century. The author of some 150 books, he redefines the meaning of the word "prolific." He specialized, if that's the right word for someone so versatile, in history, biography, essays, travelogues, and poetry. While some of his works have always remained in print, others, sadly, have gone out of print, and are very hard or impossible to come by. As I share in this personal reflection, I first fell in love with Belloc in high school, when a chance discovery at a bookstore allowed me to acquire a hefty stack of his works, which I then devoured in my plaid reading chair at home. The value of Belloc's work abides, because he brings a philosophical and religious vision to history that enables him to make more sense of the vast tangle of details and their implications than is often to be found among secular historians, in spite of their deep but narrow scholarship. Os Justi Press has now positioned itself as a major republisher of Belloc's writings. In this video I introduce our new series The Distributist Bookshelf; our matching set of three beloved Belloc classics (The Path to Rome, The Cruise of the Nona, and The Four Men); our collaboration with Mysterium Press of England as the exclusive US distributor of their new editions of Belloc biographies (Cranmer, Cromwell, Wolsey, James II, Charles I, Charles II); and our five new reprints... with more on the way!