Series XVIII. The Hermitage Journals
Subtitled A Diary Kept While Working on the Biography of Thomas Merton, this 231 page published book charts Griffin's 18 visits to Merton's hermitage, from August 5, 1969 through June 15, 1972 (plus three other entries made at his home in Fort Worth, Texas). The edition includes a short preface by Griffin--his last piece of writing composed for publication--and a folio of his photographs of the hermitage and its surroundings. The cloth edition was published by Andrews and McMeel in 1981, the year after Griffin's death; a paperback version appeared a few years later under Doubleday's Image imprint.. Like Black Like Me, this book is a diary set apart from Griffin's ongoing Journal (1950-1980), and was intended as a self-contained work for publication. The scholar will not find either text in the overall pagination of the Journal, even though there are other entries for the years (in which these two books were composed) in that larger 3,000 page compendium. Nonetheless, if one were to read the two published diaries and the Journal chronologically, the overall story of Griffin's life-line continues uninterrupted from 1950 to 1980.. In the case of The Hermitage Journals, the text was first drafted as a diary from 1969-1972. That draft was edited and a second draft was made in 1978-1979 by Griffin in collaboration with Father Tom McKillop, the author's close friend and spiritual guide during the last three years of life. That second draft was edited by Conger Beasley for the cloth edition. But because both Father McKillop and Griffin's widow, Elizabeth, did not favor all the deletions Beasley had made from the second draft, yet a fourth and final draft was agreed upon for cloth publication.. The Hermitage Journals, then, was the last book Griffin prepared for publication under contract, although it appeared posthumously.
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