About this house

The Prophet was published in New York in 1923 by Alfred A. Knopf. Kahlil Gibran, born in Bsharri, wrote it in English after a dozen years of waiting — the same span Almustafa waits in Orphalese. It has never been out of print.

The 1923 English text is in the public domain in the United States. You may read it, copy it, set it, and make new work from it. This site does that: a quiet reading room, quote cards, and ceremony packs, with objects to follow.

We are not Alfred A. Knopf, Penguin Random House, the Gibran National Committee, or the Kahlil Gibran Collective. Later books (Sand and Foam, Jesus the Son of Man, The Garden of the Prophet) remain in copyright in the US and are not here. Gibran’s paintings are held by museums and are not reproduced.

Knopf still prints a handsome cloth gift edition; if you want the object that has sat on American nightstands for a century, buy that. What we sell, when we sell, will be new work: typesetting, notes, original plates, paper.

The words on the chapter pages are Gibran’s. Everything around them — this house, the cards, the packs — is ours.