H.W. “Bunny” Austin: Moral Re-Armament Book Collection
H.W. “Bunny” Austin: Moral Re-Armament Book Collection
This collection features three books:
-Moral Rearmament edited by H.W. Austin
-That Man Frank Buchman by Peter Howard
-Life Began Yesterday by Stephen Foot
This is a very special set of books that are
About Bunny Austin:
Henry Wilfred "Bunny" Austin born August 26, 1906 and passed away August 26, 2000 was an English professional tennis player and prominent member of the Oxford Group(Moral Re-Armament) that became close with the founder Frank Buchman.
Moral Rearmament edited by H.W. Austin
This book was edited by Bunny Austin and is a collection of letters about the Oxford Group/Moral Re-Armament. This book is a first printing and was published in December 1938 at the time, the fellowship was still known as The Oxford Group. This book may be the very first published book to take on the name “Moral Rearmament”.
That Man Frank Buchman by Peter Howard
This book was written by Peter Howard who is well known as a leader of Moral Re-Armament. This is a first printing from June 1946. The book was inscribed and gifted to a Doctor in Niagara Falls in January 1947. Below the inscription on the first page of the book, a list of Moral Re-Armament members signed their names. “Bunny Austin” is one of the members that signed and gifted this book.
Life Began Yesterday by Stephen Foot
Life Began Yesterday by Stephen Foot - First Cheap Edition: A book of Moral Re-Armament. From 1939 and has its original dust jacket. This book was inscribed and gifted in October 1939. Below the inscription is a list of Moral Re-Armament members that signed the book. With the book, comes a “Luncheon Menu” which Bunny Austin signed the back of.
More about Bunny Austin:
He married actress Phyllis Konstam in 1931, after meeting her in 1929 on a transatlantic liner while travelling for the US Open, and together they were one of the celebrity couples of the age. Austin played tennis with Charlie Chaplin, was a friend of Daphne du Maurier, Ronald Colman, and Harold Lloyd, and met both Queen Mary and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
In 1933, concerned by increasing threats of a renewal of European, and indeed wider, war, Austin became involved in the Oxford Group, later Moral Re-Armament, speaking on public platforms and writing press articles. He and Fred Perry were the only players to raise their voice, in a letter to The Times, against the Nazi ban on Jews joining the German team for the Davis Cup. According to Austin's friend Peter Ustinov, Austin was "disgracefully ostracised by the All-England Club because he was a conscientious objector". In fact, soon after British declaration of the Second World War, before the question whether he might register as an objector arose, he accepted an invitation from Frank Buchman, Oxford Group founder, for a speaking tour of the US, and went, with the apparently overt approval of the British government. In 1943, with the extension of US conscription to Allied resident citizens, he was drafted into the US Army Air Force, but a diagnosis of Gilbert's Syndrome (periodic malfunction of the liver) precluded him from combat service, and he was discharged in 1945. The syndrome explained his occasional and sudden fatigue on the court.