The Life and Passion of Aleck Maury

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.

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

Originally published in 1934 as Aleck Maury, Sportsman, the novel is retitled for this new edition, in keeping with Caroline Gordon’s original intention. 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.”

Caroline Gordon (1895–1981) was an American novelist and critic. Her writing earned her the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship and O. Henry Award and a prominent place in the Southern Renaissance. A convert to Catholicism, she was friend and mentor to Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, and others. Robert Penn Warren praised her for “enriching our literature uniquely.”

Paperback: 240pp.

ISBN: 978-1952826115