Please note: In order to keep Hive up to date and provide users with the best features, we are no longer able to fully support Internet Explorer. The site is still available to you, however some sections of the site may appear broken. We would encourage you to move to a more modern browser like Firefox, Edge or Chrome in order to experience the site fully.

Supporting your high street Find out how »
The Book of Hermits : A History of Hermits from Antiquity to the Present, Paperback / softback Book

The Book of Hermits : A History of Hermits from Antiquity to the Present Paperback / softback

Paperback / softback

Available to Order - This title is available to order, with delivery expected within 2 weeks

Description

Hermits have thrived in every major historical era, geography, culture, and society - from antiquity to the present, East and West, in deserts, forests,

and mountains, depicted in art, literature, and lore.

What are their motives?

Religious, spiritual, philosophical? Ethical, aesthetic, psychological? From a love of wilderness to a desire for the anonymity of life as a "hermit in the city." From an inkling about the universe to a desire for radical simplicity. The historical hermits have reflected all of these.

As Kahlil Gibran put it, "A hermit renounces the world of fragments to enjoy the world wholly, without interruption." Hermits want, as Thoreau proposed of himself, to "live deliberately."

Within these pages, all these motives are explored, all the hermits considered: poets, sages, teachers, philosophers, the eccentric, pious, irreverent, sociable, reclusive, and wise - men and women. Hermits from India, China, Japan, and South Asia, huts, cells, and cabins, from the Middle East to Europe to the United States. The waning of hermits shifted the modern Western world to solitude. But the persistence of hermits, even today, is universal.


Information

Save 2%

£16.00

£15.65

Available to Order - This title is available to order, with delivery expected within 2 weeks
Add to Basket
Sign in to add to wishlist
 
Free Home Delivery

on all orders

 
Pick up orders

from local bookshops

Information