The 1906 edition of The Catholic Encyclopedia had numerous articles, short stories and books contained within its bindings. Looking at the book written by the Countess de Flavigny, I noted that several chapters were added throughout the book by two other writers, Fr. Parry and Fr. Anderdon. These two men had very different writing styles from the Countess’ cozy, motherly manner. Apparently some editor from The Catholic Encylcopedia thought it worked.
Father Parry was a well-known Catholic priest who wrote the most widely read catechism published in the US before the Baltimore Catechism. He wrote in a scholarly mid-Victorian style, impersonal and serious.
Father Anderdon was an Irishman, teaching at a Dublin seminary. He wrote scholarly works, educational works and a few short story anthologies. His more conversant style still was more scholarly than de Flavigny’s.
The difficulty was in relaxing the style of the two priests to fit more comfortably into the made for children book Marie de Flavigny had written. Trial and error were required to make them sound more relaxed without losing the sense of the essays. The first chapter, written by Father Parry, was the most difficult, being an essay on time and its use and abuse. It is a very serious subject and difficult to relay to children. It is written on a more adult level.
The best parts of the book are the pictures. These are hand drawn pen and ink drawings depicting events in Jesus’ life. The artist, unknown to us, is very realistic in his work, common for the era in which this was originally published. I assume that the pictures were original to the Catholic Encyclopedia. There are thirteen pictures in total, eleven of which got into the revised book.
Once I finally edited the book the way I wanted, I felt the need to explain what I did and why I did it. Hence, the prologue grew from a paragraph to several pages as I encouraged my readers to understand the book.
I, and the crew at Lanternarius Press, hope you enjoy this little book.