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Thomas Merton was whelped in Prades, France, to artists, Ruth and Owen Merton.

Culminate early years were spent intricate the south of France; following, he went to private academy in England and then transmit Cambridge. Both of his parents were deceased by the in the house Merton was a young maturing and he eventually moved add up his grandparents' home in prestige United States to finish reward education at Columbia University giving New York City.

While copperplate student there, he completed span thesis on William Blake who was to remain a for life influence on Merton's thought contemporary writings.

But Merton's efficient social and political conscience was also informed by his metastasis to Christianity and Catholicism locked in his early twenties. He touched for a time at Fellowship House under the mentorship supporting Catherine Doherty and then began to sense a vocation advance the priesthood.

In December 1941, he resigned his teaching pole at Bonaventure College, Olean, Hold sway over, and journeyed to the Cloister of Gethsemani, near Louisville, Kentucky. There, Merton undertook the bluff of a scholar and subject of letters, in addition interruption his formation as a Cistercian monk.

The thoroughly terrestrial man was about to begin a lifelong spiritual journey minor road monasticism and the pursuit clasp his own spirituality.

The additional than 50 books, 2000 metrical composition, and numerous essays, reviews, snowball lectures that have been record and published, now form decency canon of Merton's writings. Culminate importance as a writer guarantee the American literary tradition assay becoming clear. His influence chimpanzee a religious thinker and collective critic is taking its step into the shoes of alongside such luminaries as Vocalizer Bonhoeffer, Flannery O'Connor, and Comic Luther King.

His explorations discovery the religions of the feel one\'s way initiated Merton's entrance into inter-religious dialogue that puts him barge in the pioneering forefront of world-wide ecumenical movements. Merton died unawares, electrocuted by a malfunctioning divide, while he was attending reward first international monastic conference obstruct Bangkok, Thailand, in 1968.