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Edward Rice Papers

 Collection
Identifier: GTM-GAMMS448

Collection-level Scope and Content Note

The Edward Rice Collection includes correspondence regarding Jubilee Magazine, issues of Jubilee Magazine, information of Rice's friend, Thomas Merton, photographs, and artwork.

Dates

  • 1928 - 1991
  • Majority of material found within 1938 - 1978

Collection-level Access Restrictions

Most manuscripts collections at the Georgetown University Booth Family Center for Special Collections are open to researchers; however, restrictions may apply to some collections. Collections stored off site require a minimum of three days for retrieval. For use of all manuscripts collections, researchers are advised to contact the Booth Family Center for Special Collections in advance of any visit.

Biographical notes

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

Extent

13.5 Linear Feet (9 boxes )

Language of Materials

English

Acquisition Information

Gift of Edward Rice

Title
Edward Rice Papers
Status
In Progress
Author
Georgetown University Library Booth Family Center for Special Collections
Description rules
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Language of description
English
Script of description
Latin
Language of description note
English

Repository Details

Part of the Georgetown University Manuscripts Repository

Contact:
Lauinger Library, 5th Floor
37th and O Streets, N.W.
Washington DC 20057