Contemporary South African novelist
Robert Edward Way (b. 1912) was born in Durban, Natal, South Africa. Over the years he has traveled extensively in Europe, Africa, and the United States; worked as a farmer, an operator of a thoroughbred stud farm, and an antiquarian bookseller; and, between 1940 and 1943, served in the British Army as a part of the Finnish International Volunteer Force, Horsed Cavalry and Mountain Battery.
In his introduction to The Wisdom of the English Mystics, Robert Way outlines the path of contemplation peculiar to England and tells us something of its principal followers. His selection from their writings–both poetry and prose–brings out their essential teaching and shows how it has manifested itself, among Catholics and Protestants alike, over the centuries. A solitary life and gentle soul characterize the insular mystics. From the twelfth-century Aelred of Rievaulx to Evelyn Underhill in our own time, they have sought personal communion with God. Yet we know nothing of the author of The Cloud of Unknowing, probably the best-known book of its kind in the English language, only that it was written in fourteenth century, the period which produced the greatest flowering of mystic spirits. Other works quoted are the thirteenth-century _Ancrene Riwle _and the sayings and verse of William Blake, George Herbert, Henry Vaughn, George Fox, and William Law, to name just a few.
