Classics of Western Spirituality [CWS] is an English-language book series published by Paulist Press since 1978, which offers a library of historical texts on Christian spirituality as well as a representative selection of works on Jewish, Islamic, Sufi and Native American spirituality. Each volume is selected and translated by one or more scholars or spiritual leaders, with scholarly introductions and bibliographies of both primary and secondary materials. The series contains multiple genres of spiritual writing, including poems, songs, essays, theological treatises, meditations, mystical biographies, and philosophical investigations, and features works by famous authors such as Augustine of Hippo and Martin Luther. As well as lesser-known authors such as Maximus the Confessor and Moses de León. CWS was originally planned by an editorial board of some thirty scholars to "[foster] more enlightened spiritual direction and fruitful meditation practices", and was projected to contain sixty volumes. Today it comprises more than 130 volumes, and for ease of reference has been thematically subdivided below into pre-Reformation Christianity (57 volumes), Christianity after the Reformation (47 volumes) and Judaism, Islam and Native American religions (28 volumes). The series was almost immediately "acclaimed as one of the most important religious publishing events of recent years." An early reviewer remarked that "the impression left by a preliminary contact with this courageous attempt to open the vast treasures of Western spiritual classics to present-day readers is one of astonished admiration. It is a triumph of editing and the printer's art." More recently, in assessing the impact of the series as a whole, one scholar concluded that CWS has been responsible "not only in making the acknowledged classics of the tradition more available, accessible, and better known but also in the process (...) expanding and deepening the canon of classics and thereby both broadening and refining the definition of 'classics' and of 'spirituality' itself." Pre-Reformation Christianity Albert and Thomas: Selected Writings, edited by Simon Tugwell (1988, ) Anchoritic Spirituality: Ancrene Wisse and Associated Works, translated by Anne Savage and Nicholas Watson (1991, ) Angela of Foligno: Complete Works, translated by Paul Lachance (1993, ) Angelic Spirituality: Medieval Perspectives on the Ways of Angels, translated by Steven L. Chase (2002, ) Anglo-Saxon Spirituality: Selected Writings, translated by Robert Boenig (2000, ) Apocalyptic Spirituality: Treatises and Letters of Lactantius, Adso of Montier-en-Der, Joachim of Fiore, the Spiritual Franciscans, Savonarola, translated by Bernard McGinn (1979, ) Athanasius of Alexandria: The Life of