By Little and by Little: The Selected Writings of Dorothy Day

When she died in 1980, Dorothy Day was called “the most significant, interesting and influential person in the history of American Catholicism” (Commonweal), and “a non-violent social radical of luminous personality” (The New York Times). As co-founder in 1933 (with the French peasant philosopher Peter Maurin) of the Catholic Worker movement, and for almost fifty years editor and publisher of its newspaper, she applied the Gospels to a sweeping radical critique of our economic, social, and political system, and addressed the most urgent issues of our time: poverty, labor, justice, civil liberties, and disarmament. She saw the movement as an affirmation of life and sanity, and a way to “bring about the kind of society where it is easier to be good.” The present volume is a selection of Dorothy Day’s published work, spanning a period of over fifty years. Although the great majority of the pieces have been reprinted from The Catholic Worker, a number of other magazine articles are included, as well as selections from all her books. – Publisher.