?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
(ANVIL PRESS/ HAMMER, VICTOR) Merton, Thomas. The Solitary Life. Printed in American Uncial type in black and red; title in Andromaqua Uncial. 8vo, publisher's brown boards with printed paper spine label; dust jacket bearing printed poem by Merton with initial letter I cut from brass by Victor Hammer, toned, spine panel ends chipped. (Lexington, KY [Stamperia del Santuccio], 1960)
presentation copy press-numbered 10 of only 60 copies on whatman paper signed by merton. The only unexpurgated edition of Merton's spirited defense of the hermetical life. The work was rejected by Vatican censors, charging that his words would hurt the Trappist Order of monks. Merton relented to some of the editorial demands and an altered version was eventually published. However, still wishing to have it published in its full version, Merton's friend Victor Hammer took the manuscript and printed it at his private press, the Stamperia del Santuccio in this small run of sixty copies.
