Few people seem to know who wrote it – or when
by Sam McGarrity, Guideposts Associate Editor

Desiderata – a poetic formula for happiness, a gentle urging to be at peace with God and with life – is known and loved the world over for its words of reassurance. Its message, heralded on posters and plaques hanging in homes and over desks, has comforted and inspired millions of people. Television audiences have heard it from the lips of Ali McGraw, Johnny Cash and Joan Crawford. Ann Landers' readers have found it in her column.

It's been printed in Reader's Digest, Good Housekeeping and New Woman, and in the sixties hippies passed it out on street corners. In 1972, it was recorded as a narrative song that sold more than a million copies. It's been recited at weddings and funerals, and just before his death, Adlai Stevenson had planned to use it as his Christmas greeting.

The wealthy, the poor, the famous and the infamous have used Desiderata as a guide in changing their lives for the better. Affluent attorneys attest to this. So do ex-convicts and ex-drug addicts. It has been used in drug rehabilitation programs. It has been shared in schoolrooms, in courtrooms. There's even a woman on Park Avenue in New York who has it printed on her hostess apron.

Yet, in spite of the fame of Desiderata, few people seem to know the true story of its origins. In fact, many people think, mistakenly, that it was written in the 17th century and inscribed on a wall at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Baltimore. How surprised they are to learn that it was actually written in 1927 by a stocky, middle-aged, Indiana attorney named Max Ehrmann.

The confusion began one Sunday in the late-fifties. The Reverend Frederick Ward Kates, then rector of St. Paul's, liked to distribute copies of inspirational pieces to his parishioners. That particular Sunday he placed Desiderata in the pews; it was printed on the church's letterhead, which contained the church's date of founding: 1692.

It is thought that the mimeographed copies passed from hand to hand, until it landed on the desk of an editor. Seeing the date 1692, the editor assumed the piece was in the public domain, had Desiderata printed up, stuck the name of the church and the date underneath, and so began a massive theft of a copyrighted, contemporary work.

This created a costly and frustrating predicament for Robert L. Bell, who in 1967 acquired the copyright to Desiderata at great financial risk. "At the time," recalls Bell, "I was president of Bruce Humphries, a publishing company that was starving for lack of capital, which owned the publishing rights to Desiderata and which owed me $16,000 in back salary. I was having an incredible struggle trying to support my wife and four children, one of whom was in college."

"I owned loans against Bruce Humphries and, in a court procedure, agreed to relinquish my liens in exchange for the publishing rights to Desiderata. Then I took every cent I had and bought the copyright from Richmond Wight, nephew and heir to the Ehrmann works."

More Historical Facts

Mr. Ehrmann, who was born in 1872, entered Harvard's School of Philosophy at the age of 22. He studied philosophy and law, spent ten years writing six books and finally, when he realized he could not make a living as a writer, began practicing law. Later he became deputy prosecuting attorney in Terre Haute.

He composed Desiderata out of the need to remind himself how he wanted to live his life. The title is Latin for "things to be desired."

He died in 1945. Three years later his widow included Desiderata in The Poems of Max Ehrmann, published in 1948 by the Bruce Humphries Publishing Company, of Boston.

The Rev. Halsey Cook, rector of Old St. Paul's, told inquirers that no literary work of any kind could have possibly have been found in St. Paul's Church in Baltimore in 1692, because the church did not then exist. St. Paul's parish was established in 1692, but its first crude log church was not erected until the following year.

A Baltimore authority on early English literature said, "This work, as it reads now, was not written in 1692. The words are not those of the seventeenth century, nor is the composition."

Other sources of Desiderata

Desiderata, a poem for a way of life is available for purchase in hardcover at Amazon.com. "This classic book of inspiration has sold more than 190,000 copies and continues to give comfort and cheer to new readers year after year." Max Ehrmann's other books, The Desiderata of Love, The Desiderata of Happiness, The Desiderata of Hope, and The Desiderata of Faith are also available at Amazon.com

Les Crane's record of Desiderata is available as an audio CD thru Amazon.com.