By Caroline Gordon

The Life and Passion of Aleck Maury is, on the surface, a sportsman’s autobiography. (In fact, it is a “retelling” of the life of Gordon’s own father.) A classicist and teacher by profession, as well as a husband and father, Aleck Maury finds delight in nothing so much as he does in fishing and hunting. Set aflame at the young age of eight on a possum hunt, Aleck’s passion becomes the defining feature of his existence, transcending the limits of hobby to become something approaching liturgy. 

Originally published in 1934 as Aleck Maury, Sportsman, the novel is re­titled for this new edition, in keeping with Caroline Gordon’s original intention. The Life and Passion of Aleck Maury captures the book’s virility, its fervid, Hemingway-worthy sequences of nature at work and war, and its encompassing character arc. Such is the perceptive power of the novel that, in the words of Robert Penn Warren, “even for a reader who is no sportsman the author has managed to convey an almost unflagging excitement and a sense of participation in that delight by which Aleck Maury lives.”

“Delight…I had lived by it for sixty years and now it was gone and might never come again…”

Caroline Gordon (1895–1981) was an American novelist and critic. Her writing earned her a Guggenheim Fellowship and O. Henry Award and a prominent place in the Southern Renaissance. A convert to the Catholic faith, she was friend and mentor to Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, and others. Her works include The Malefactors, How to Read a Novel, and (with Allen Tate) The House of Fiction: An Anthology of the Short Story.

Paperback: 234pp.

ISBN: 978-1952826115