Autobiography

1940

Brasch Collection NB497 G55 A2 1940

London: Jonathan Cape

Eric Gill’s life was full of severe complexities and severe contradictions. And despite these flaws (some of which cannot be forgiven), he aimed for integration, a unity where all things could hang together: ‘bed and board, the small farm and the workshop, the home and the school, earth and heaven.’ His Catholicism was a powerful life-force, and his Autobiography – his aptly claimed ‘autopsychography, a record of mental experience’ – concludes with his reception into the Church. Everything after that it was designated by him as a Postscript. Here is the well-known self-portrait of Gill with his folded paper printer’s cap.