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A Pelican in the Wilderness: Hermits, Solitaries, and Recluses
In a series of essays, an acclaimed novelist delves deeply into the spiritual life, reflecting on ascetism in the works of Lao Tzu, the Desert Fathers, Wordsworth, Thoreau, and others. Reprint. 20,000 first printing.
304 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2002
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520 people want to read
About the author
Isabel Colegate
24 books43 followersIsabel Colegate was born in 1931 in London and was educated at Runton Hill School in Norfolk. In 1952 she went into partnership with Anthony Blond, who was then starting a literary agency and would go on to found a publishing house, and in 1953 she married Michael Briggs, with whom she has a daughter and two sons.
Colegate’s first novel, The Blackmailer, was published by Blond in 1958 and was followed by two more novels focusing on English life in the years after the Second World War: A Man of Power (1960) and The Great Occasion (1962). These were later republished by Penguin in an omnibus volume, Three Novels, in 1983.
Though she has written a number of other successful novels, as well as reviews for the Spectator, Daily Telegraph and TLS, Colegate is best known for her bestseller and major critical success The Shooting Party (1980), which won the W.H. Smith Literary Award and was adapted for a now-classic 1985 film version. The book is still in print today (with Counterpoint in the US and as a Penguin Modern Classic in the UK). More recently, she has written the acclaimed novel Winter Journey (1995) and the non-fiction work Pelican in the Wilderness: Hermits and Solitaries (2002).
Isabel Colegate was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in1981. She and her husband live in Somerset.
Valancourt Books
Colegate’s first novel, The Blackmailer, was published by Blond in 1958 and was followed by two more novels focusing on English life in the years after the Second World War: A Man of Power (1960) and The Great Occasion (1962). These were later republished by Penguin in an omnibus volume, Three Novels, in 1983.
Though she has written a number of other successful novels, as well as reviews for the Spectator, Daily Telegraph and TLS, Colegate is best known for her bestseller and major critical success The Shooting Party (1980), which won the W.H. Smith Literary Award and was adapted for a now-classic 1985 film version. The book is still in print today (with Counterpoint in the US and as a Penguin Modern Classic in the UK). More recently, she has written the acclaimed novel Winter Journey (1995) and the non-fiction work Pelican in the Wilderness: Hermits and Solitaries (2002).
Isabel Colegate was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in1981. She and her husband live in Somerset.
Valancourt Books
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
February 27, 2013
Disappointing. The enthusiastic review published in a magazine I'd read led me to expect something other than the superficial sketches of solitaries that make up the bulk of this work. I also would not have expected, either from the review or the book title, the repeated examples of English landscape architecture during the 18th and early 19th century, with descriptions of the fashion to construct "hermitages" that, in many instances, may not have been used as such.
Lessons reinforced: tastes are not universal; expectations may result in disappointment.
Lessons reinforced: tastes are not universal; expectations may result in disappointment.
July 3, 2012
This is a tough one to get through. Clearly the author did copious research, but the first three quarters of the book have an underlying detached irony that's off-putting. She doesn't have enough skill to hang together all of the stories, so the whole thing just meanders. The meandering might be fine, if she had a love for her subject matter. Stringing together vignettes requires stories that illustrate why the reader should care about these people. The author doesn't seem to care herself.
And then in the last fifty pages, she acquires the necessary warmth. It's almost as if she wrote the last quarter of the book at a different stage in her life. Or maybe what started out as an intellectual study finally transformed into something better.
The refuge of the intellectual's precious overspecialization, is that he (or she) has a passion that can be imparted (at least somewhat) to the reader. You should only read this book if you find reclusiveness (or hermetic devotion) intriguing. Or even a bit fascinating. Because there is plenty of "so what" to wade through.
And then in the last fifty pages, she acquires the necessary warmth. It's almost as if she wrote the last quarter of the book at a different stage in her life. Or maybe what started out as an intellectual study finally transformed into something better.
The refuge of the intellectual's precious overspecialization, is that he (or she) has a passion that can be imparted (at least somewhat) to the reader. You should only read this book if you find reclusiveness (or hermetic devotion) intriguing. Or even a bit fascinating. Because there is plenty of "so what" to wade through.
February 9, 2011
I picked up this book after searching my library’s catalogue for Isabel Colegate’s works, and was curious about this non-fiction work of hers (ok I was curious about all her works as I have yet to read her fiction). This is a book about the solitary, about hermits and recluses, and I wasn’t entirely sure why I felt compelled to search it out, but I did, and I took it home and it sat on my shelf for a little while, as I sought out what I felt to be the more interesting books in my recent Library Loot. Then I finally picked up A Pelican in the Wilderness, and I was pleasantly surprised. This book is less a scholarly treatise than a collection of thoughts, a wandering, a pondering of a subject that is so obviously dear to Colegate. Her passion for this topic is very affecting. So while at first hesitant, I grew to understand her ardor. What makes a person leave society behind and live on their own? Why do some of these hermits naturally attract a following? What is living all alone like? Colegate delves into the lives of the well-known and the obscure, often quoting from literary sources such as Somerset Maugham, Geoffrey Chaucer and Alexander Pope. She discusses the lives of Thoreau, J.D. Salinger, Lao-Tse, St Anthony, and many more.
But if you are truly looking for answers about becoming a hermit, this isn’t exactly the book for you. Instead, this book is a little more like an exploration, a revaluation of the solitary, a kind of selection of character sketches (although character sketch doesn’t seem to be the right word – it sounds too vague). Colegate’s journey is a meandering one, and at times disjointed which can occasionally frustrate, but A Pelican in the Wilderness is a wonderful voyage through a surprisingly refreshing topic, with Colegate’s passionate voice as a rather suitable tour guide.
“The idea of the hermit’s life – simplicity, devotion, closeness to nature – lurks somewhere on the periphery of most people’s consciousness, a way glimpsed, oddly familiar, not taken. It is like one of those tracks you sometimes see as you drive along a country road, a path leading up a hill and disappearing into a wood, almost painfully inviting, so that you long to stop the car and follow it, and perhaps you take your foot off the accelerator for a couple of seconds, no more. Most of us wouldn’t like it if we did walk up the hill, we’d become bored, depressed, uncomfortable, take to drink. But the idea is still there: the path we didn’t take.”
But if you are truly looking for answers about becoming a hermit, this isn’t exactly the book for you. Instead, this book is a little more like an exploration, a revaluation of the solitary, a kind of selection of character sketches (although character sketch doesn’t seem to be the right word – it sounds too vague). Colegate’s journey is a meandering one, and at times disjointed which can occasionally frustrate, but A Pelican in the Wilderness is a wonderful voyage through a surprisingly refreshing topic, with Colegate’s passionate voice as a rather suitable tour guide.
“The idea of the hermit’s life – simplicity, devotion, closeness to nature – lurks somewhere on the periphery of most people’s consciousness, a way glimpsed, oddly familiar, not taken. It is like one of those tracks you sometimes see as you drive along a country road, a path leading up a hill and disappearing into a wood, almost painfully inviting, so that you long to stop the car and follow it, and perhaps you take your foot off the accelerator for a couple of seconds, no more. Most of us wouldn’t like it if we did walk up the hill, we’d become bored, depressed, uncomfortable, take to drink. But the idea is still there: the path we didn’t take.”
February 7, 2010
Isobel Colegate brings a novelists insight to the lives of hermits through the ages - men and women, Buddhist, Christian and others who have found the journey either liberating or hell. She tells their stories with a genuine interest and warmth that is neither overly enthusiastic (knowing how many have been brutalized by the experience) nor uncomprehendingly critical.
For more reviews, essays and stories, please visit my website:
Serendipities of a Writer's life www.dennisonberwick.info
For more reviews, essays and stories, please visit my website:
Serendipities of a Writer's life www.dennisonberwick.info
November 15, 2023
The subject of this book is of particular interest to me. Having lived a fairly solitary life and years alone in mountain wilds, I’ve been described by others as a hermit or recluse. I quite like the label and use it as an anti-definitional job-title on LinkedIn. Ironically, in 18th century England, there were contracted jobs on offer for hermits to live in grottos or fabricated rustic hermitages, as a form of garden ornament.
What you will find is a kind of Eurocentric (including USA), certainly British roundup of people who have been notable recluses; often unkempt or characterised by religious zeal, filth, suffering, and/or madness.
Although I found many passages of interest, this is a poorly designed book. Not that the binding has failed (there are a few typos indicative of a lack of care) but it's annoying to have the chapter headings omitted from the contents page, the illustrations have no captions and the alternating use of unattributed line drawings of trees and what may be a hermitage in the author’s garden (charming as they are) serves no function other than to confuse the reader.
By the end, I felt as if the author was on a kind of quest (pilgrimage) to uncover her inner solitary. She certainly travelled and read widely but without a central thesis the book tends to feel scattered and unstructured. She writes unevenly but clearly loves words, and often sent me to my dictionary for the unfamiliar: coenobitic, yashmack, eremitic, syneisaktism, apophatic, dilatory, catamite, accidie.
Charles Hamilton wanted a hermit who would ‘continue I the Hermitage for seven years. Where he would be provided with a Bible, optical glasses, a mat for his feet, a hassock for his pillow, an hour-glass for his time piece, water for his beverage and food from the house. He must wear a camlet robe, and never, under any circumstances, must he cut his hair, beard or nails, stray beyond the limits of Mr Hamilton’s grounds, or exchange one word with the servant.’ If he lasted the full seven years he would be paid 700 guineas; if he broke the rules or left earlier he got nothing. (p.187)Jobs aside, there is a lot to say about the joys and perils of solitude. Despite Colegate’s considerable literary erudition (I have read many of the books she mentions), those looking for any critical examination of how a solitary life might be lived well, will not find much in this book. Nor will they find much about the ancient Chinese intellectual tradition of retreating from cities to the mountains and following a simple, austere pursuit of the three perfections (calligraphy, painting, poetry).
What you will find is a kind of Eurocentric (including USA), certainly British roundup of people who have been notable recluses; often unkempt or characterised by religious zeal, filth, suffering, and/or madness.
The celebrity hermit a modern phenomenon, seems to have escaped the tolerance, let alone respect, accorded to other species of solitary, being regarded instead with indignation and outrage. The reasoning behind this must be thought that no one would be a writer or an actor or a musician – or indeed be prominent in any way – unless their chief object was to be famous, and that therefore they should lay themselves down gladly as a sacrifice on the alter of human curiosity. (p. 38)There are certainly some interesting characters. Who would not be intrigued by Isabelle Eberhardt?
Half-French, half Russian, loudly and affectedly Slav in her emotional outbursts and swings of mood, small and sallow, frequently drunk or drugged, sexually promiscuous, and scornful of conventional morality, she dressed as a man and liked to sit and smoke and drink with soldiers and tribesmen from the deep Sahara. She was married to an Arab. She scandalised the army wives. She maddened authorities of all kinds. (p.88)or indeed, the wealthy William Beckford whose manifold talents (marred by sexual indiscretion) included tower building. I wondered if the privileges of the mid-18th century British upper classes who had the means to realise their eccentric imaginings was worth the darker colonial exploitations and slavery that financed them.
Although I found many passages of interest, this is a poorly designed book. Not that the binding has failed (there are a few typos indicative of a lack of care) but it's annoying to have the chapter headings omitted from the contents page, the illustrations have no captions and the alternating use of unattributed line drawings of trees and what may be a hermitage in the author’s garden (charming as they are) serves no function other than to confuse the reader.
By the end, I felt as if the author was on a kind of quest (pilgrimage) to uncover her inner solitary. She certainly travelled and read widely but without a central thesis the book tends to feel scattered and unstructured. She writes unevenly but clearly loves words, and often sent me to my dictionary for the unfamiliar: coenobitic, yashmack, eremitic, syneisaktism, apophatic, dilatory, catamite, accidie.
March 18, 2021
Isabel Colegate and her husband bought an old country house in the west of England in the 1960s. While making some landscape renovations they discovered the site of a small hermitage built two hundred years earlier, when there was a real craze for such things. Georgian-era landowners would even go so far as to hire bearded old men to live in their quaint, rustic hermitages on a permanent basis, to lend the place a gothic air and make a picturesque background for summer picnics.
The discovery and renovation of the old hermitage on her property must have sparked a passion in Colegate, who is mostly known as a novelist. The product of her research into the lives of “hermits, solitaries, and recluses” is discursive and enjoyable, learned but not stuffy or academic. It reads like a travelogue, and it makes a pretty grand tour. From Lao-Tse and the Taoist mountain hermits of China to St Anthony and the early Christian anchorites of the Egyptian desert; from those ornamental hermits of the 18th and 19th centuries to the solitary nature worshipers of the early environmental movement; from reclusive celebrities and poets to modern-day monks and nuns living alone off-grid in the English countryside.
Who hasn’t fantasized about turning recluse? When I was a boy we lived on the edge of a river delta, a flat maze of waterways, earthen dykes, and semi-submerged islands bordered in oaks. I had a boating map of the area and would stare dreamily at it for hours, making plans to renounce the world and disappear into the delta with a canoe. I would build a shanty for myself on the edge of some farmer’s sunflower field and live on whatever fish I might catch.
In middle age the fantasy still returns. Once each year I take a day entirely to myself and spend it alone in the wilderness. Last year my destination was Cooper Spur, a rocky shoulder of alpine tundra and volcanic debris on the northeast slope of Oregon’s Mt Hood. Halfway up the trail to the summit of Cooper Spur is a little stone-built shelter dating from the 1930s, where hikers can stop to rest or find protection from storms. Last year I had the spot to myself for a half hour and couldn’t help but imagine setting up shop there as a hermit, though maybe not in the winter.
The discovery and renovation of the old hermitage on her property must have sparked a passion in Colegate, who is mostly known as a novelist. The product of her research into the lives of “hermits, solitaries, and recluses” is discursive and enjoyable, learned but not stuffy or academic. It reads like a travelogue, and it makes a pretty grand tour. From Lao-Tse and the Taoist mountain hermits of China to St Anthony and the early Christian anchorites of the Egyptian desert; from those ornamental hermits of the 18th and 19th centuries to the solitary nature worshipers of the early environmental movement; from reclusive celebrities and poets to modern-day monks and nuns living alone off-grid in the English countryside.
Who hasn’t fantasized about turning recluse? When I was a boy we lived on the edge of a river delta, a flat maze of waterways, earthen dykes, and semi-submerged islands bordered in oaks. I had a boating map of the area and would stare dreamily at it for hours, making plans to renounce the world and disappear into the delta with a canoe. I would build a shanty for myself on the edge of some farmer’s sunflower field and live on whatever fish I might catch.
In middle age the fantasy still returns. Once each year I take a day entirely to myself and spend it alone in the wilderness. Last year my destination was Cooper Spur, a rocky shoulder of alpine tundra and volcanic debris on the northeast slope of Oregon’s Mt Hood. Halfway up the trail to the summit of Cooper Spur is a little stone-built shelter dating from the 1930s, where hikers can stop to rest or find protection from storms. Last year I had the spot to myself for a half hour and couldn’t help but imagine setting up shop there as a hermit, though maybe not in the winter.
March 24, 2020
I am the zeitgeist! In these odd times I found I had bought this book a few days before Covid 19 really hit the headlines and 'self-isolation' was presented as a desirable, or even compulsory.
On the face of it this book would seem exactly my cup of tea, as its subtitle "hermits solitaries and recluses" would seem to me to indicate 'eccentric' rather than a temporary state of affairs.
Of course it depends on what your idea of eccentric is but sadly there is seemingly little of that breed here unless you count the spiritual quest eccentric.
Because it would appear that is the books real subject, the numerous (probably not much more than a page long) biographies, are almost exclusively related to those seeking contemplation/knowledge of God and, almost exclusively a Christian God, with a few other religions added in, mainly at the beginning of the book, in order (he says cynically) to broaden its potential appeal.
Even a number of these 'solitaries' are perhaps not so solitary as I might wish. Some certainly live alone, but often one reads of them living in a monastery or even as a 'community' of solitaries' (surely an oxymoron) receiving visitors and/or out and about doing good or just dispensing the old wisdom.
There are even cases of people living with only one other person often described as a servant, disciple or helper. Aside from the implicit dehumanization of said servant, disciple or helper, it all sounds a bit of a cheat.
Colegate is certainly enthusiastic; it is apparent that she is also on some sort of quest of her own (she describes her hikes to abandoned retreats or visits to hermits) and has an obvious empathy with those she meets but its scatter-gun approach means there is not enough flow to hold the book together.
She also does not really attempt to get into the psychology of anchorites or of those self denying martyrs/saints beyond the most basic broad brushstrokes, another limit of choosing saints and mystics which is a pity. For that you need to go to something like Rudolph Bells 'Holy Anorexia' which attempts to place denial into a social context.
Colegate has built a grotto in her own garden (as you do) and does reference the fashion for such folly building as part of the landscape garden of the early 1800's but once again could have expanded upon this as she could also have expanded on the solitary 'outsider' artist producing work is secret.
All in all this is a useful but by no means all emcompassing book, perhaps partly because the book is now quite old (2003) and thus just about pre-internet. Its all a lot easier to dig up these mini-bios. wonder if Colegate has a mobile.
On the face of it this book would seem exactly my cup of tea, as its subtitle "hermits solitaries and recluses" would seem to me to indicate 'eccentric' rather than a temporary state of affairs.
Of course it depends on what your idea of eccentric is but sadly there is seemingly little of that breed here unless you count the spiritual quest eccentric.
Because it would appear that is the books real subject, the numerous (probably not much more than a page long) biographies, are almost exclusively related to those seeking contemplation/knowledge of God and, almost exclusively a Christian God, with a few other religions added in, mainly at the beginning of the book, in order (he says cynically) to broaden its potential appeal.
Even a number of these 'solitaries' are perhaps not so solitary as I might wish. Some certainly live alone, but often one reads of them living in a monastery or even as a 'community' of solitaries' (surely an oxymoron) receiving visitors and/or out and about doing good or just dispensing the old wisdom.
There are even cases of people living with only one other person often described as a servant, disciple or helper. Aside from the implicit dehumanization of said servant, disciple or helper, it all sounds a bit of a cheat.
Colegate is certainly enthusiastic; it is apparent that she is also on some sort of quest of her own (she describes her hikes to abandoned retreats or visits to hermits) and has an obvious empathy with those she meets but its scatter-gun approach means there is not enough flow to hold the book together.
She also does not really attempt to get into the psychology of anchorites or of those self denying martyrs/saints beyond the most basic broad brushstrokes, another limit of choosing saints and mystics which is a pity. For that you need to go to something like Rudolph Bells 'Holy Anorexia' which attempts to place denial into a social context.
Colegate has built a grotto in her own garden (as you do) and does reference the fashion for such folly building as part of the landscape garden of the early 1800's but once again could have expanded upon this as she could also have expanded on the solitary 'outsider' artist producing work is secret.
All in all this is a useful but by no means all emcompassing book, perhaps partly because the book is now quite old (2003) and thus just about pre-internet. Its all a lot easier to dig up these mini-bios. wonder if Colegate has a mobile.
August 8, 2020
"From Lao-tse and the Buddha, St. Anthony and the early Celtic hermits, through Rousseau, Thoreau, Ruskin and down to the present day, certain gifted persons, each in hi own way, have shown a vocation for living alone and apart, finding in simplicity and attention to Nature a spiritual space to be explored and rejoiced in. Others, retreating from the world in scorn or cut off from it by scandal, have found that solitude is Hell, a pit of melancholy and morbid fancy. In this, her first work of nonfiction, novelist Isabel Colgate gives us the lives of the solitaries -- male and female, medieval and modern, divinely inspired and patently fraudulent. But this is no mere gallery of saints and sinners, poets and misanthropes. It is also a re-valuation of solitude for out times, and a reminder that is is in solitude that the soul meets itself, refreshes itself, and from there goes out to join the communal dance."
~~back cover
It just wasn't interesting enough to keep wading through.
~~back cover
It just wasn't interesting enough to keep wading through.
November 17, 2018
If this was an audiobook I would have felt as if I were cornered with Isabel at a cocktail party as she hops around excitedly in subject matter that she is quite interested & trivially knowledgeable about while I can only gleam certain tidbits of anecdotes because she does not delve deeper into anything she broaches & because this niche subject matter is really only an odd fancy of hers. This however was not an audiobook and though at first I enjoyed the free-flowing entries streaming in about a hermit here and a recluse there, it glazed my eyes over eventually. I'm glad my drink needs a refill.
November 11, 2020
One of the most enjoyable non-fiction reading experiences I've had for a while. It helps, of course, if one is interested in hermits, solitaries and recluses and I certainly am. This compendium really makes the lifestyle appear very attractive, but sadly I fear I cannot afford it.
Ms. Colegate is so enthused by her subject matter that I felt at times she was sharing this abundance of anecdotes, miniature biographies, songs, poems and asides just with me. It's a warm, friendly, witty style she has, not unlike some of the characters we encounter in these pages.
Ms. Colegate is so enthused by her subject matter that I felt at times she was sharing this abundance of anecdotes, miniature biographies, songs, poems and asides just with me. It's a warm, friendly, witty style she has, not unlike some of the characters we encounter in these pages.
August 10, 2019
This book is more a scholarly list of known historic hermits. The focus is on Europe and Christianity, with a few Eastern religions and non-Europeans thrown in. As this was published in 2002, the book is clearly lacking the state of current solitude and the methods of finding such in the modern world. So much time and people were thrown together that no depth was reached.
June 12, 2018
Not all that I'd hoped...
August 24, 2019
Beautiful, funny and wise. Also extremely interesting. I now want to be a hermit myself if only for to have Isabel Colegate come visit me in my lonely cabin or cave.
December 19, 2020
a subject i’ve been interested in for most of my life. a lot of short random treatments.
not recommended.
not recommended.
Read
July 24, 2025Repetitive, but it compelled me to do further research on some of the hermits.
January 9, 2026
Didn't make it through. This book is more an outlining of the significance of solitude, with hermits or solitaries as just characters supporting this premise. Not really a travelogue, or a biographical work, more a history of the solitary, so not really what I was looking for. Plus the author kept referencing romantic and trancendentalist poets and authors, so the whole thing came off as extremely over-educated and disconnected from its subject matter.
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Tried again 10 years later. The writing is so difficult to follow, I could barely make it through sentences for all the em-dashes, semi-colons, fragments, etc.
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Tried again 10 years later. The writing is so difficult to follow, I could barely make it through sentences for all the em-dashes, semi-colons, fragments, etc.
March 31, 2008
This is a somewhat odd but very interesting book. The author presents themed chapters on hermits, solitaries, and recluses all religious and on-religious kinds, from all over the world. It's really like character sketches of these different figures. She also intersperses her own travels and experiences, and her attempt to restore an 18th century hermitage on her property in England. It's not in chronological order, but more of a wander through the topic. I found it very enjoyable. There are also interesting sketches throughout the book.
October 15, 2016
Tried again in 2015 and still couldn't finish it.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews