Friar Jerome’s Beautiful Book was published by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. in 1881. The book is a narrative poem — long enough to be published as a separate volume — that tells a story set in a medieval monastery. Friar Jerome, a monk of extraordinary artistic gifts, devotes years to creating a magnificently illuminated manuscript. A jealous fellow monk destroys it. The poem explores Jerome’s response to this catastrophe and the relationship between his art, his faith, and his capacity for forgiveness.
The subject reflects the late-nineteenth-century fascination with medieval craftsmanship — the same impulse that drove William Morris’s Kelmscott Press, the Pre-Raphaelites’ medieval fantasies, and the Arts and Crafts movement’s idealization of hand labor against industrial production. Aldrich shares these enthusiasms, and his poem treats the illuminated manuscript as both a work of art and a spiritual practice — the monk’s patient, laborious decoration of sacred texts is presented as a form of prayer.
The poem’s publication as an illustrated book was itself a statement: the physical object was designed to echo, in its own modest way, the beauty it described. The typography, paper, and binding were all chosen to create an aesthetic experience appropriate to the subject.
As a narrative poem, Friar Jerome’s Beautiful Book demonstrates Aldrich’s technical mastery — the verse is smooth, the story clearly told, the emotional arc satisfying. It lacks the rawness or ambition that would make it major poetry, but as craftsmanship it is exemplary.
Collecting Friar Jerome’s Beautiful Book
First edition (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston, 1881): Illustrated, decorative binding.
Market values:
- First edition, fine: $30–$80
- Very good: $10–$30