Looking back at The King of the Golden City

Though it was far from being the first book I published, I nevertheless consider The King of the Golden City to have been the seed from which St Augustine Academy Press was born.

This assertion requires some explanation…

Hopefully, by now, you have read our previous retrospectives, narrating the early history of the Press, beginning with the little booklets I used to make for my children, which grew into Learning to Follow the Mass, Panic in the Pews, Treasure and Tradition, and the Little Children's Prayer Book. 

But I think I can say truthfully that what made the difference between creating a few books that probably wouldn't have garnered much interest, and building an entire publishing company, was the discovery of the work of Mother Mary Loyola…and that would not have happened without Kathy McCoy and the book she used to prepare my children for their first communion: The King of the Golden City.

This isn't meant to be an advertisement for that book, so I won't delve into how incredible that story is, and how deeply it has affected my family's faith and spirituality. I’ll stick to the facts, beginning with the fact that this book was the ultimate rabbit hole for me…

In our last episode, I told the story of Kathy McCoy’s First Communion class, and how that led to my discovery of the corpus of works by the same author as The King of the Golden City. That authorship alone was all the recommendation necessary…I knew I wanted copies of those books on my shelves…and it stood to reason that others would want the same…so I began the work of reprinting them.

However, I still remember the first time Kathy showed me the gorgeous copy she owned of the original 1921 version of this book. I recognized the watercolor illustrations which had been faithfully reprinted in the newer paperback version our family owned. But in addition to those illustrations, each page of this book was beautifully framed with a border in green ink that contained elements with a Eucharistic theme. I remember thinking to myself: how incredible would it be to create an exact reprint of this book! But that dream seemed far too ambitious. I had learned just enough by that point to know how much it cost to print books in color…and there was no way my budget could stretch that far. 

Nor did it seem a worthwhile investment of time…after all, I had an entire stack of books waiting to be resurrected, while this story had been republished by several different people over the years. Besides the version our family owned, published by Little Way Press in 2004, there was the edition created by Janet Marie Hartley and Little Flower Press in 1996 (reprinted in 1998 with hand-drawn illustrations). Theresa Johnson at Catholic Heritage Curricula had printed a black and white version of the book in 1997 (this is the one containing those mysterious illustrations I sought for a long time…see our last episode for that story…I never did find where they came from, even after reaching out to Theresa to ask about the history of this book). And in 2007, yet another version had been published by Janet McKenzie of Race for Heaven.  So…there seemed to be more than enough copies on the market.

However, I have never been content merely to reprint the books that I find. I don't know about you, but when I pick up a book, very often knowing something about its author can make all the difference in whether I will bother to open the cover. Whether it's Scott Hahn or Stephen King, JRR Tolkien or Robert Louis Stevenson, knowing about the author establishes a sense of credibility. Besides, I'm insatiably curious…and I was dying to know more about the author who had penned this beloved story.

So it was not merely disappointing, it was downright puzzling when I reached out to the Bar Convent in York, where Mother Mary Loyola spent most of her life, and received a brief reply with a single page about her life. Unfortunately, they had little information on her, and even less interest. 

I was forced to begin sleuthing myself. Thus, beginning in the fall of 2010, I began using Ancestry.com and other online resources, and over the course of a few years I managed to uncover an enormous amount of information about her family, even managing to locate living relatives, as well as other researchers with similar interests. Mother Loyola and her family had so many connections among well-known personages of their era that my research seemed to expand infinitely. One bread crumb trail would lead to another, and another…it was honestly amazing how things unfolded. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to a number of helpful archivists, as well as those family members who shared a great deal with me. 

But there was also much that could not be accessed online. The Jesuit Archives in London had a folder full of correspondence between Mother Loyola and her editor, Father Herbert Thurston. The archives of the Venerable English College in Rome held several letters concerning her that had been written by her cousin, who happened to have been Rector there in the late 19th century. And there were stacks of family photos belonging to relatives… All of these required a personal visit to peruse.

It wasn't until 2015, in the wake of the success of Treasure and Tradition, that I was able to ultimately realize these two important dreams in my pursuit of Mother Mary Loyola: First, I was finally able to gather enough funds to make the trip to Rome, London and York, visit the archives and meet Mother Loyola's relatives. That was a truly incredible trip…

And second, I was finally able to afford to create the beautiful replica reprint of the original hardcover version of The King of the Golden City–something I had considered almost impossible five years before. This was a huge milestone for me! It was sort of like coming full circle…

And while my research into Mother Mary Loyola has sadly gathered dust in recent years, as more important projects are constantly taking precedence, the Special Centenary Edition of this beautiful book–the book that planted a seed that grew into a publishing company–is still something I'm so proud of.

This was actually the first time I set out to create a replica version of an original book. Honestly, it was the first I had encountered that merited the painstaking effort; up to that point, most of the originals I had reprinted were much simpler. Of course, since all of this took place years before this blog began, I was never able to assemble what has since become my favorite feature: a before-and-after post! So–10 years later–here are some fun comparison photos showing my first efforts at creating a faithful replica of an original book!

**Postlude**

As part of my continuing research into the life of Mother Mary Loyola, and efforts to republish all of her works, I have also hunted down copies of her books in other languages. In 2017, I found a copy of The King of the Golden City in French from 1926, and discovered that there were actually two different versions: one for girls, and one for boys…and they had charming black and white line illustrations to match. 

So in addition to reprinting that French edition (and using its illustrations to create a Spanish translation), I was finally able to solve a long-standing problem: parents of boys had frequently bemoaned the fact that their sons were unable to evince interest in this wonderful story, because the main character was…a girl!!!

Tongue in cheek aside, I have sons of my own, so I understood this quandary…but despite suggestions that I create a version for boys, I had always balked at making such significant changes to the original story. It wasn't just a matter of changing names; some of the episodes involved other girl characters, and girly things like clothes and jewelry. This would require extensive rewriting. But now there was a clear and time-tested means of making these modifications! Assuming that the adaptations in the French version had been approved, if not by Mother Loyola herself (she was still alive at the time), then at least by the publishers of that era, I now felt confident in making those same adaptations to the English version. And that was how I created our Special Edition for Boys.

Thus, at present, we offer the original hardcover Centenary Edition, the Special Edition for Boys, and editions in Spanish, French and Italian. Moreover, I have an original copy of King of the Golden City in Dutch (see the photo to the right), which is almost as lovely as the original in English, but I am unsure whether there is enough interest to make it worthwhile to reprint that… But I would love to see this book printed in many different languages!

But now I have some more fun news: as part of our 15th year anniversary celebration, we will be doing another giveaway this month. One lucky winner will receive a free copy of our beautiful hardcover Centenary Edition of The King of the Golden City! 

To enter, simply follow our Instagram profile @staugustineacademypress, like our King of the Golden City giveaway post, and tag three friends in the comment section! This giveaway is open to US Residents (we love our international customers, but sadly overseas shipping has grown prohibitively expensive!) and will close this Friday, April 11th at 11:59 PM Central Time.