Publisher, J.M. Dent & Sons and James Clarke & Co. London, 1961, 2 vols.
Hardback with D/J. The two volumes are uniformly bound in the original green cloth covered boards with silver titling on the spines, pp. xxxix, + 466 pages in volume i and 422 pages in volume ii. There is a frontispiece portrait of St Catherine of Genoa in volume 1 and a frontispiece illustration of The Venerable Battista Vernazza in volume 2.
Condition, the cases of the books are in very good condition. The contents are tight and clean with no inscription. There is light foxing on the fore edge of the half-title page and on the fore edge of the title page in volume 1. The dustwrappers have shelf wear with some light soiling and the spines are faded. There is a little chipping at the top of the spine of the wrapper for volume 1 which also has a tear of about 1/4″ on the top front edge. There is some light foxing on the wrapper for volume 2. They have not been price clipped.

Friedrich von Hügel (1852-1925) was an influential Austrian religious writer, Modernist theologian and Christian apologist. The Mystical Element of Religion as Studied in St. Catherine of Genoa and Her Friends is probably his best known and most important work, first published in 1908. The work is a critical but largely appreciative philosophy of mysticism. Hügel cautions: “…mysticism would never be the whole of religion; it would become a dangerous error the very moment it claimed to be this whole.”