The Gallery of Living Catholic Authors was a

Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

literary society A literary society is a group of people interested in literature. In the modern sense, this refers to a society that wants to promote one genre of writing or a specific author. Modern literary societies typically promote research, publish newslet ...

founded in 1932 by American nun and archivist Sister Mary Joseph Scherer (1883–1967). As part of the

Catholic literary revival The Catholic literary revival is a term that has been applied to a movement towards explicitly Catholic Church, Catholic allegiance and themes among leading literary figures in France and England, roughly in the century from 1860 to 1960. This oft ...

movement, it sought to promote interest in contemporaneous Catholic

literature Literature is any collection of Writing, written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially novels, Play (theatre), plays, and poetry, poems. It includes both print and Electroni ...

. At the time of its founding, Sister Mary Joseph was an educator at

Webster College Webster University is a private university with its main campus in Webster Groves, Missouri, United States. It has multiple branch locations across the United States and countries across Europe, Asia, and Africa. The university has an alumni net ...

Webster Groves Webster Groves is an inner-ring suburb of St. Louis in St. Louis County, Missouri, United States. The population was 24,010 at the 2020 census. The city is home to the main campus of Webster University. Geography According to the United States ...

Missouri Missouri (''see #Etymology and pronunciation, pronunciation'') is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking List of U.S. states and territories by area, 21st in land area, it border ...

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

, near

St. Louis St. Louis ( , sometimes referred to as St. Louis City, Saint Louis or STL) is an independent city in the U.S. state of Missouri. It lies near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a populatio ...

. Initially a modest effort to promote Catholic literature on Webster's campus, Sister Mary Joseph would soon expand the society by inviting hundreds of prominent Catholic writers, poets, and clergy from around the world. In 1936, the Gallery's board sought to select 40 Gallery members to form an ''academy'' of the greatest living Catholic authors, a nod to the membership of ''les immortels'' of the

Académie Française An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of tertiary education. The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 386 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, the go ...

. By that year, membership had grown to 200, rising to 775 by 1954. Sister Mary Joseph commissioned architect

Ralph Adams Cram Ralph Adams Cram (December 16, 1863 – September 22, 1942) was a prolific and influential American architect of collegiate and ecclesiastical buildings, often in the Gothic Revival style. Cram & Ferguson and Cram, Goodhue & Ferguson are partn ...

to design a library to store its extensive

archives An archive is an accumulation of historical records or materials, in any medium, or the physical facility in which they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or organ ...

, although this was never built. In 1945, Sister Mary Joseph billed the Gallery as "the Catholic literary center of the world". Despite Mary Joseph's ambitions, by the early 1960s, the Gallery was in decline. After Sister Mary Joseph's resignation in 1960 and death in 1967, the Gallery quickly faded into relative obscurity. As of 2025, its collections are maintained by the

Georgetown University Library The Georgetown University Library is the library system of Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. The library's holdings now contain approximately 3.5 million volumes housed in seven university buildings across 11 separate collections. Histo ...

List of members

Hilaire Belloc Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc ( ; ; 27 July 187016 July 1953) was a French-English writer, politician, and historian. Belloc was also an orator, poet, sailor, satirist, writer of letters, soldier, and political activist. His Catholic fait ...

* G.K. Chesterton *

Claude McKay Festus Claudius "Claude" McKay OJ (September 15, 1890See Wayne F. Cooper, ''Claude McKay, Rebel Sojourner In The Harlem Renaissance'' (New York, Schocken, 1987) p. 377 n. 19. As Cooper's authoritative biography explains, McKay's family predate ...

Christopher Dawson Christopher Henry Dawson (12 October 188925 May 1970) was an English Catholic historian, independent scholar, who wrote many books on cultural history and emphasized the necessity for Western culture to be in continuity with Christianity not ...

Clare Boothe Luce Clare Boothe Luce (; March 10, 1903 – October 9, 1987) was an American writer, politician, diplomat, and public conservative figure. A versatile author, she is best known for her 1936 hit play '' The Women'', which had an all-female cast. He ...

Thomas Merton Thomas Merton (January 31, 1915December 10, 1968), religious name M. Louis, was an American Trappist monk, writer, theologian, Christian mysticism, mystic, poet, social activist and scholar of comparative religion. He was a monk in the Trapp ...

François Mauriac François Charles Mauriac (; ; 11 October 1885 – 1 September 1970) was a French novelist, dramatist, critic, poet, and journalist, a member of the'' Académie française'' (from 1933), and laureate of the 1952 Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel Pr ...

Maria von Trapp Maria Augusta von Trapp Order of the Holy Sepulchre (Catholic), DHS (; 26 January 1905 – 28 March 1987), often styled as "Baroness", was the stepmother and matriarch of the Trapp Family, Trapp Family Singers. She wrote ''The Story of the ...

Fulton Sheen Fulton John Sheen (born Peter John Sheen; May 8, 1895 – December 9, 1979) was an Catholic Church in the United States, American Catholic prelate who served as Roman Catholic Diocese of Rochester, Bishop of Rochester from 1966 to 1969. He was ...

Bruce Marshall Bruce Marshall may refer ro: * Bruce Marshall (writer), Scottish writer * Bruce Marshall (ice hockey), NCAA ice hockey coach * Bruce Marshall (taxonomist), New Zealand taxonomist * Bruce D. Marshall, American Catholic theologian {{Hndis, name=Mars ...

Jacques Maritain Jacques Maritain (; 18 November 1882 – 28 April 1973) was a French Catholic philosopher. Raised as a Protestant, he was agnostic before converting to Catholicism in 1906. An author of more than 60 books, he helped to revive Thomas Aqui ...

Ronald Knox Ronald Arbuthnott Knox (17 February 1888 – 24 August 1957) was an English Catholic priest, theologian Theology is the study of religious belief from a religious perspective, with a focus on the nature of divinity. It is taught as an ...

Graham Greene Henry Graham Greene (2 October 1904 – 3 April 1991) was an English writer and journalist regarded by many as one of the leading novelists of the 20th century. Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquired a re ...

Thomas J. Quigley Thomas J. Quigley (1905 – 1960) was an American priest and educator. He was the Superintendent of Schools in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from 1939 - 1955 and the namesake A namesake is a person, place, or thing b ...

References

{{reflist Literary societies Catholic organizations Defunct organizations based in the United States Organizations established in 1932