November 26, 1896–June 7, 1967

Helen C. White (1896–1967) was an American Catholic author, scholar, and professor.

In a career spanning nearly five decades, she wrote six novels (all now available from Cluny) as well as studies of poetry and devotional literature. White’s many awards include twenty-three honorary doctorates, two Guggenheim fellowships, and Notre Dame’s Laetare Medal.

Until Cluny began recovering her work, White’s star had faded out of sight—and tragically so. For these words in review of her work still hold true: “A novelist of first-class importance, Helen C. White…recalls such great names as Sigrid Undset and Willa Cather to the mind… It is not because she resembles the Norwegian novelist, or the American novelist, imitatively, for her originality is unquestionable; but she does display, in her own fashion, something of the frank, strong realism combined with mystical intuitiveness that Undset so uniquely displays, with more than a small share of that power of almost musical evocation of the beauty and mystery of human life merging into the deeper mystery of divine life, which is the distinctive gift of Cather.”