author
Michael Williams
1878–1950
A lively Canadian-born journalist who turned a restless early life into searching spiritual memoir and influential Catholic journalism. Best known for The Book of the High Romance, he also helped found Commonweal, one of the longest-running Catholic opinion magazines in the United States.
1 Audiobook
Good Health and How We Won It, With an Account of the New Hygiene
by Upton Sinclair, Michael Williams
About the author
Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Michael Williams was a Canadian-born writer and journalist whose life moved through newspaper work, bohemian detours, and a later return to Catholic faith. Sources agree that he became an important voice in Catholic letters, and that his spiritual autobiography The Book of the High Romance grew out of that personal journey.
He worked as a reporter before emerging as a public writer on religion, culture, and social questions. Williams is especially remembered as the founding editor of Commonweal, launched in 1924, where he helped shape a magazine meant to engage literature, politics, religion, and public life from a Catholic perspective.
Some library records list his dates as 1878–1950, while biographical reference sources and Commonweal's own history give 1877–1950. Since the records are inconsistent, the safest summary is that he belonged to the late nineteenth-century generation and died in 1950 after a career that connected memoir, journalism, and Catholic intellectual life.