The Way of a Pilgrim
The Russian spiritual classic of a wanderer practicing the Jesus Prayer, first published in 1884 from an anonymous manuscript. Its author remains debated.
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- Original byline
- Anonymous
- Published
- 1884
- Form
- Novels
- Authorship
- Still unknown
- Reason for anonymity
- Unrecorded
- Copyright
- Public domain
- Reference
- Wikipedia · Wikidata
The authorship story
The Way of a Pilgrim recounts a Russian peasant wanderer's practice of the unceasing Jesus Prayer, and its publication from a manuscript at Kazan in 1884 carried the hesychast tradition to a world audience; Salinger's Franny and Zooey later made it famous in the West. The text presents itself as the pilgrim's own artless telling. Its actual authorship is a scholarly question: candidates including the monk Arkhimandrit Mikhail Kozlov have been argued from manuscript evidence, and no identification has settled the matter. This site records the author as unknown, the narrator being a persona of the text rather than a documented person.
Questions readers ask
Who wrote The Way of a Pilgrim?
Nobody knows. No author for The Way of a Pilgrim has been identified in the documented record.
Can I read The Way of a Pilgrim for free?
Yes. The Way of a Pilgrim is in the public domain and the full text is free to read at the Internet Archive.
When was The Way of a Pilgrim published?
The Way of a Pilgrim was published in 1884 without an author’s name.
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