Sheed and Ward at One Hundred

“Sheed and Ward at One Hundred”

Earlier this year America magazine published Carole Sargent’s “Sheed and Ward’s Unfinished Business” (America, April 2026, pp. 46-51), a worthy tribute to Frank and Maisie’s immense contribution to English-speaking Catholicism through their publishing house which began a century ago in 1926.

I became a “Sheedwardian” in 1954 during my freshman year at Seattle University after reading Frank’s Theology and Sanity for a theology class, and have remained one ever since. One highlight for me over these many years occurred in the autumn of 1959 in Washington, D.C., at Catholic University when as a seminarian I heard Maisie lecture on G.K. Chesterton – a stunning presentation, without prepared text or notes. A second highlight came some twenty-three years later in London when along with many former Catholic Evidence Guild members I was present for Frank’s memorial service at Corpus Christi Church in Maiden Lane where he and Maisie often worshipped during their London years. Now, a Carmelite friar for over seventy years, my fondest memory is Frank and Maisie promoting Carmelite spirituality for many years when Anglophone Catholics knew little about this precious treasure.

In 1952, several years after his best-selling The Seven Storey Mountain appeared, Thomas Merton drew wide attention to St. John of the Cross in his The Ascent to Truth. In 1973, the Institute of Carmelite Studies in Washington, D.C., began its publications to promote standard American English translations of perennial Carmelite classics by John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, Thérèse of Lisieux, Elizabeth of the Trinity, Lawrence of the Resurrection, and Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein), which cumulatively have now sold over one million copies. But before Merton and ICS Publications, Frank and Maisie provided compelling Carmelite literature for readers in the UK and US.

Sheed and Ward’s biggest Carmelite project was fittingly the entire writings of St. Teresa of Avila, possibly the most impressive Christian woman after Mary of Nazareth. This effort produced five volumes totaling over 2200 pages. The three-volume The Complete Works of Saint Teresa of Jesus appeared in London in 1946, containing Teresa’s masterpieces The Way of Perfection and The Interior Castle that earned for her recognition as one of the most enlightened spiritual teachers in world history. Her 437 existing letters (of an estimated 2000 letters she actually wrote) appeared in 1980 in two volumes, surprisingly revealing a thoroughly human woman along with her gracious mystical insights. The noted American Church historian John Tracy Ellis believed these letters belong among the all-time classics of Christian literature.

In an effort to provide a deeper understanding of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, the amazing popular French “Little Flower” who was canonized in 1925 and considered by Pius X “the greatest saint in modern times” and by Pius XI “a masterpiece of nature and grace”, Sheed and Ward published in 1949 the Collected Letters of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux translated from French by Frank himself and noted by Vernon Johnson in his introduction as “the first complete and authentic presentation to the public of the letters of St. Teresa [sic] written by her both before and during her life in Carmel.”

In the 1950s, Sheed and Ward produced English translations of St. John of the Cross and Three Mystics: El Greco, St. John of the Cross, and St. Teresa of Avila by the French Carmelite friar Pere Bruno de Jésus-Marie [Froissert], ODC. Probably not a huge commercial success for the publishers at the time, these two books nonetheless profoundly influenced a young American writer from Milledgeville, Georgia, by the name of Flannery O’Connor who wrote a discerning review of the biography’s 1957 printing (purchase price $6.00 per copy) for her local diocesan newspaper. Sheed and Ward also arranged with Pere Bruno, who in addition to his biographical writings, was editor of Études Carmélitaines, the widely respected French journal of religious psychology, to translate appropriate numbers into English, including Love and Violence and Satan. In addition to illuminating articles on the devil in the writings of John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila, this latter volume also contained essays on possession, exorcism, primitive religions, the “Death of God,” and Satan in our day to stimulate the religious imagination of English readers.

Since Maisie’s death in 1975 and Frank’s in 1981, their publishing house has taken on a vagabond existence, with five different owners since it was first purchased by Universal Press Syndicate in 1973. Bloomsbury, the current owner, now promises content that reflects “engaged Catholicism,” focusing on peace, justice, and cultural issues. In the meantime ICS Publications has expanded its active list to now include forty-five titles, thus decreasing the need for Sheed and Ward to contribute new Carmelite titles. Still, in 1989, Sheed and Ward, then owned by the National Catholic Reporter in Kansas City, published Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers edited by Regina Siegfried and Robert Morneau, followed three years later by Winter Music: A Life of Jessica Powers by Dolores R. Leckey. Powers, a poet who after a few promising years working in Catholic literary circles in New York, lived quietly for over forty years in a cloistered Carmelite monastery in her native Wisconsin as Sr. Miriam of the Holy Spirit, O.C.D., until her death in 1988. In those years her poems made her one of the most insightful interpreters of Carmelite spirituality to arise in the United States.

Coincidentally, Sheed and Ward began publishing in October 1926, just two short months after Pope Pius XI proclaimed Saint John of the Cross a Doctor of the Universal Church in ascetical and mystical theology. This event inspired Pere Bruno to write Saint Jean de la Croix to increase popular awareness of the relatively unknown Spanish doctor. He completed the biography in 1929 with an introduction by Jacques Maritain. In 1932 Benziger Brothers brought out an English translation in the United States edited by the English Carmelite historian Benedict Zimmerman, O.D.C., before Sheed and Ward subsequently began publishing the book after 1950. To honor this centenary year of St. John’s doctorate, ICS Publications will publish a new “landmark” biography of St. John by the late Spanish scholar Fr. José Vicente Rodriguez, O.C.D., and translated by Dr. Barbara Mujica of Georgetown University. Written in the tradition of St. John’s great Carmelite biographers – Pere Bruno, Silverio de Santa Teresa, and Crisógono de Jesús Sacramentado – the new biography benefits from both the author’s indefatigable research into the latest discoveries in St. John’s life and writings and his easy literary style. Without replacing earlier biographies, this translation will undoubtedly be the biography of choice for English readers in future years.

As Sheed and Ward now takes up its “unfinished business,” it promises to offer “a platform for a new generation of Catholic authors to draw on Maisie and Frank’s legacy.” Likewise, in its press release announcing the new biography of St. John of the Cross, the Institute of Carmelite Studies commits itself “to continue publishing, teaching, and transmitting the wisdom of Carmel for generations to come.” This is good news for the future of Catholic publishing in the English language. As this promise unfolds, I remain forever indebted to Frank and Maisie for the fifty years (1930 to 1980) when they contributed so generously and creatively to Carmelite spirituality in the English-speaking world.

Kevin Culligan, O.C.D., edited Carmel and Contemplation: Transforming Human Consciousness (Carmelite Studies VIII, 2000) and A Better Wine: Essays Celebrating Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D. (Carmelite Studies X, 2007) for ICS Publications.