Edward Rice Papers

Edward Rice was born on October 23, 1918 in New York City to Edward and Elise Rice. He attended Columbia University from 1936-1940, where he worked on the undergraduate literary magazine "The Jester of Columbia" and met Thomas Merton, a monk and spiritual writer, Robert Lax, a poet, Ad Reinhardt, a painter, and Seymour Freedgood, associate editor of Fortune magazine. Rice did not, however, take a degree from Columbia. While Rice was raised a Catholic, he grew away from the religion and only returned after the war, in large part due to the influence of his friend Thomas Merton. Rice's other former classmates also had a profound impact on his post-Columbia career. For example, Robert Gerdy, Robert Lax, and Rice maintained wartime correspondence and collaborated on potential Hollywood scripts while Rice worked at publishing houses in New York. Rice and Lax established the A.M.D.G Publishing Company in 1950 to publish their creation, Jubilee magazine "for the Church and her people." The magazine's first issue was published in April 1953, at which point Rice quit his six year position at RKO Pathe News and Warner Pathe News. Jubilee was significant in its use of photography and earned critical acclaim, but suffered low subscription levels and financial problems. The magazine was sold in a hostile takeover to Catholic publishing house Herder & Herder in July 1967. Eventually Rice and staff resigned, from which point the magazine has been published under the name U.S. Catholic. After Jubilee, Rice worked as a freelance photographer and journalist for Catholic Relief Services, the World Health Organization, and the United Nations. His travels to India led him to author Eastern Definitions, Temple of the Phallic King (ed.), and Mother India's Children. Edward Rice married Margery Hawkinson in 1948 and was divorced in 1968. They had two sons, Edward (Ted) and Christopher. Rice passed away in 2001 at 82 years of age after struggling with Parkinsons.

Thomas Merton (1915-1968), known in religion as Father Louis, was a Trappist monk of the Cistercian Abbey of Gethsemani near Bardstown, Kentucky. Merton's best-selling autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain (1948) has become a classic. His other works include The Sign of Jonas, No Man is an Island, New Seeds of Contemplation, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, The Way of Chuang Tzu, and Mystics and Zen Masters. Since his death in Bangkok, Thailand, in December 1968, a number of his works have been published posthumously, including The Asian Journal, The Collected Poems, The Literary Essays, and five volumes selected from his letters. His Personal Journals (1939-1968), closed for twenty-five years after his death, have been published in seven volumes.

For further information see: http://www.college.columbia.edu/cct_archive/may01/may01_feature_rice.html http://www.merton.org/collection.aspx