Kahlil Gibran

Kahlil Gibran was born in 1883 in Bsharri, a mountain village in Ottoman Mount Lebanon, to a Maronite Catholic family. In 1895 his mother brought him and his siblings to Boston, where they lived in poverty in the South End. A settlement-house teacher noticed his drawings and introduced him to the Boston artist Fred Holland Day. He returned to Beirut to study Arabic literature, came back to Boston after the deaths of his sister, brother and mother, and later studied art in Paris. With the support of his patron Mary Haskell, he settled in New York in 1911. He wrote first in Arabic, becoming a leading figure of the Arab émigré literary movement, and then in English. The Madman (1918) was followed by The Prophet (1923), a book of poetic counsel that became one of the best-selling books of the century. He also wrote Jesus, the Son of Man (1928). He died in New York in 1931 and was buried in Bsharri.

Kahlil Gibran is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: Raised Maronite Catholic; his writings blend Christian imagery with a broad, personal spirituality. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica