James Laughlin and Merton first came to known each other through Merton's former professor at Columbia University, poet Mark Van Doren. Van Doren recommended some of Merton's poems to Laughlin for his publishing house, New Directions. These poems became Merton's first published book, Thirty Poems. Laughlin, having been born into a wealthy steel-producing family in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, decided he would rather enter the literary world. He attended Harvard and, during his years there, went to Europe and met Ezra Pound, who encouraged Laughlin to get into publishing. While still a student at Harvard, Laughlin began New Directions in Norfolk, Connecticut, publishing a young generation of modern poets. Through correspondence and visits to Gethsemani, Merton and Laughlin forged an intimate friendship, entrusting Laughlin with some of his most private confidences.
Merton employed Marie Charron for some of his typing after he had problems with his arm and back. He would mail her tapes or manuscripts to prepare for a standard fee.
Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, Serge Bolshakoff received a doctorate in philosophy from Christ Church, Oxford. In his travels to churches and monasteries in promotion of Christian unity, he became acquainted with such notables as Pope John XXIII, Patriarch Athenagoras, Archbishop Temple of Canterbury, as well as the Abbot General of the Cistercians, Dom Gabriel Sortais (see "Sortais, Gabriel" and "Fox, James" files).
Patricia Burton has produced bibliographies of Thomas Merton and wrote The Book that Never Was: Thomas Merton’s Peace in the Post-Christian Era.
Thomasine ("Tommie") O'Callaghan was a close friend of Merton's through much of the 1960's. They met through a mutual friend and former professor, Daniel Walsh, whom Merton knew from a graduate course at Columbia University and O'Callaghan knew through the College of the Sacred Heart at Manhattanville, Purchase, New York. Merton became an adopted part of the O'Callaghan family in Louisville, getting to know Tommie's husband Frank and becoming "Uncle Louie" to the seven O'Callaghan children. Sometime Merton would visit the O'Callaghan's in conjunction with doctor's visits in Louisville. Tommie O'Callaghan also planned some picnics for Merton at Gethsemani. Merton chose her as a local member of the trustees of his literary estate in addition to the others from the publishing world in the northeast, Naomi Burton Stone and James Laughlin. (Source: The Thomas Merton Encyclopedia, pp. 340-341.)
Fr. Irenaeus Herscher was a Franciscan priest from St. Bonaventure College whom Merton knew from the library while teaching there. He is mentioned in The Seven Storey Mountain. Merton continued to request books from St. Bonaventure's library and to keep in contact with Herscher throughout his life at Gethsemani. (Source: «The Road to Joy», p. 295.)
The Very Rev. Eric Symes Abbott, 1906-1983, was an Anglican clergyman and Dean of Westminster.
Fr. M. Aelred was a Trappist Cistercian monk from Rawaseneng Monastery (also written Rawa Seneng) on the island of Java in Indonesia.
Alexandre Alexeieff writes from Paris, France regarding Boris Pasternak.
Fr. Amédée Hallier was a Trappist monk of the Abbay of Notre-Dame de Grâce in Bricquebec, Normany, France. He wrote «Un éducateur monastique», a book about St. Aelred of Rievaulx. Merton wrote an introduction which was published in the English language edition. The book was published in English as «The Monastic Tehology of Aelred of Rievaulx».
Reverend Mother Angela was abbess of the Trappist nuns at Mount St. Mary's Abbey in Wrentham, Massachusetts
At the time of writing, Bonnie Armstrong handled foreign rights for the publisher New Directions.
Johann Christoph Arnold (or John C. Arnold) is writing on behalf of the Plough Publishing House, affiliated with the Society of Brothers. The Society of Brothers is a group with Anabaptist roots and is often associated with the Hutterites and Bruderhof colonies.
Thérèse Arrés was from an area in the south of France and in the eastern Pyrenees, not far from Merton's birthplace of Prades.
Yanna Asch is writing on behalf of the School Department of the publisher Harcourt, Brace.
Waddell Austin was Managing Editor of Borestone Mountain Poetry Awards in Solana Beach, California, at the time of this correspondence.
John Bagguley and Cecil Woolf were editors of the book «Authors Take Sides on Vietnam». The book asked a range of authors to address the following questions: "Are you for, or against, the intervention of the United States in Vietnam?"; and "How, in your opinion, should the conflict in Vietnam be resolved?". Other authors in the volume included: W. H. Auden; William F. Buckley, Jr.; William S. Burroughs; Lawrence Ferlinghetti; and Allen Ginsberg. The book was modeled after «Authors Take Sides on the Spanish War», published in 1937, and compiled by Nancy Cunard. Woolf and Bagguley write to Merton from London.
Anthony L. Bannon was an editorial staff writer for «Magnificat», the newspaper of the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo, New York.
Sr. Mary Baptist is writing from the Incarnate Word Convent in Bellaire, Texas.
Sr. Mary Barbara is writing from St. Francis College in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
At the time of correspondence with Merton, Jacques Barzun was serving as Provost of Merton's alma mater, Columbia University. In a letter to the Merton Center in 1971, Barzun mentions that Merton was a friend and one-time student.
Fr. Jean Marie Beaurin is writing on behalf of Les Croisés de Notre Dame in Paris.
Lee Archer Belford is writing from the School of Education at New York University.
Fr. Benedict is a Trappist monk from the Abbey of Our Lady of New Melleray in Dubuque, Iowa.
Leilani Bentley, at the time of writing, was composing a freshman English class paper on a comparison between Merton and Dag Hammarskjold on the topic of contemplation and peace. He writes from Mulliken, Michigan.
Marina de Berg was a dancer and an actress in Paris. Born in Helsinki, Finland to parents of French and Russian orgin, she was orphaned at a young age. She achieved fame early in life as a ballerina and dancer and then as an actress primarily in the latter half of the 1940's. In the early 1950's and some professional setbacks, she questioned her place in the what she called the "wild frivolities" of life in the arts in Paris at the time. She recounts her decision to try a religious vocation with the Trappistine nuns in an autobiographical work, Trois ans à la Trappe in 1959 (translated into English as Heaven by the Hems: From Stage to Cloister, published by Sheed and Ward in 1961). She entered the Abbaye Notre-Dame de Saint-Joseph d'Ubexy, Charmes, France, in August of 1952. After a period of ill health and struggle with the rigors of the lifestyle, she left the nuns and began writing.
Hedy Bergida is writing as Senior Editor of Hawthorn Books of New York.
Berval is writing on behalf of «France-Asie: Biligual Review of Asian Culture and Problems».
Miss Biegansho is writing from Poland.
Hector Black is writing on behalf of Plough Publishing House. It was affiliated with the Society of Brothers, a Bruderhof Community, in Farmington, Pennsylvania.
Judy Blanchard desired to become a hermit sought the help of Dom Jacques Winandy, a hermit from Canada, whom Merton had recommended to her.
Sr. Bogdana is writing from the Congregation of the Sacred Heart in Krakow, Poland.
Paul Hyde Bonner's letterhead states he is writing from "The Teacherage" in Summerville, South Carolina.
Fr. Maurice Boscher is writing from Tahiti.
Russell Bourne was an editor working for Time-Life Books in New York. He follows up Abraham Heschel's inquiry about writing an essay for the Time-Life Illustrated and Annotated Bible.
Fr. Bousquet is writing from Nice, France.
Alda Lee Boyd was Publicity Director for the Seabury Press in 1967.
Mrs. Pauline B. Boyd is writing from St. Charles, Missouri.
Mother Benedicta Brennan was writing from Monroe, Michigan, a Sister Servant of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Sr. Bridget was an Anglican religious writing Merton from the Convent of St. Helena in Versailles, Kentucky. By her 1973 correspondence with the Merton Center, she was with the Convent of the Incarnation (Community of the Sisters of the Love of God) in Oxford, England.
Besmilr Brigham was born in Pace, Mississippi in 1923. Although spending much in her life traveling to places such as France, Central America, and Mexico, she was living in Horatio, Arkansas, the home of her parents, at the time of correspondence with Merton. She now lives with her daughter and son-in-law, the poet Keith Wilson, in New Mexico. In 1971, she published the book «Heaved from the Earth». Merton had many good things to say about another book she was attempting to publish at the time of writing entitled «The Tiger» (Source: The United States of Poetry website, a program produced by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting [http://www.worldofpoetry.org/usop/word.htm]).
Terry F. Brock was the Editor of the «Catholic Book Annual», published by the Thomas More Association.
John Pairman Brown was Professor of Christian Ethics and New Testament at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, California. He was a member of the Episcopal Peace Fellowship and an author.
Jane Browne was the Assistant Managing Editor of Hawthorn Books in New York and a friend of another Merton correspondent, Anne Perkins.
Frank Bruce was head of the Bruce Publishing Company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
The Western Union Telegram from "A BRYAN" was sent from Clayton, Missouri.
Fr. R. Bùi-bàng-Hiên was writing from Saigon, South Vietnam.
At the time of writing, Br. Gabriel Bunge was a Benedictine monk of Chevetogne Abbey, a monastery known for seeking reconciliation between Western and Eastern Christianity. He was later ordained as a monk, lived as a hermit in Swiss mountains from the 1980's, and was received into the Orthodox Church as a monk in 2010.
Professor Herbert Burke was teaching English at St. John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota.
Dan Burns was writing from Boystown in Miami, Florida.
Suzanne Butorovich was a high school student from Campbell, California. This is one of the longest know series of correspondence he had with a young person. Merton had dinner with her and her family while visiting California on October 3, 1968.
Grace Byrne writes from the offices of Curtis Brown publishers in New York.
Esther de Cáceres was a poet from Uruguay, whose poetry has been described as both modernist and mystical.
Merton writes to Roger Caillois, who was in Buenos Aires at t he time of writing.
Sr. Annice Callahan corresponded with Merton about the instruction of novices given the changes to religious life in the 1960's. She would later, in 1984, teach a course on Thomas Merton. She writes from the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Albany, New York.
Angus Cameron is writing on behalf of Alfred A. Knopf publishers from New York.
In 1960, Monsignor Loris Capovilla (later an archbishop) served as a secretary to Pope John XXIII and writes from Vatican City. He sent a stole worn by John XXIII upon becoming Pope as a gift to Merton through Capovilla's friend Dr. Barbato in 1960.
Barrie Peterson writes Merton from Princeton Theological Seminary about the idea of forming a "'radical Community' or commune".
Fr. Callistus Peterson was a Trappist monk, originally from Gethsemani Abbey. In the early letters, he was studying in Rome. Later, he was sent to the Trappist foundation in Las Condes, Chile.
Valerio Cardinal Valeri was Prefect of the Roman Curia's Congregation of the Affairs of Religious, currently known as the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life. He writes from the Vatican.
Sr. Mary Catherine was with the Sister Adorers of the Precious Blood at the Monastery Precious Blood - Mount St. Agnes, in Peterborough, Ontario.
Fr. Patrick Catry was a Trappist monk writing on behalf of the «Bulletin de Spiritualité Monastique», which appeared in «Collectanea Cisterciensia». He writes Merton from the Abbey of Sainte-Marie-du-Mont in Godewaersvelde (Mont des Cats), France.
Sr. Cecilia was a Trappist nun of Redwoods Monastery in California and was secretary to Mother Myriam Dardenne.
Hervé Chaigne was writing on behalf of the bi-monthly publication «Fréres du Monde» from Bordeaux, France.
Born in India, Dr. Amiya Chakravarty was a well-traveled scholar and professor of philosophy and religion who had the opportunity to meet many great people of his time, including Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, the Indian poet Dr. Rabindranath Tagore, Albert Schweitzer, Boris Pasternak, Albert Einstein, and met Merton during his Asian journey. While in correspondence with Merton, he held professorships at Boston University, Smith College and later the State University of New York at New Paltz. In addition, he served as a delegate to the United Nations for India (Source: «The Hidden Ground of Love», pp. 112).
Charles Luc Chambost writes from Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume, Var département, France.
M. R. Chandler wrote for the San Francisco Examiner.
Sr. Marie de la Redemption Chantal was a Carmelite nun writing from La Tronche, France.