Some of Traherne's Major Writings
The only work to be published in his lifetime is "Roman Forgeries" (1673).
Select Meditations was written at the end of The Commonwealth when Thomas Traherne was in his twenties, and had just become Rector of St Mary’s Church Credenhill (1657-74). It includes reflections on the problems confronting the ecclesiastical settlement of the Restoration England (1660). The handwritten book found in Birmingham in 1964, was published in 1997.
His writing continued in the 1660s with poetry and his best known Centuries of Meditation which were found on London Street Bookstalls in the winter of 1896-7, and published in 1903 and 1908.
Into the 1670s he was writing Commentaries of Heaven (an encyclopaedia of happiness), that only reached the letter "B", the final entry being ‘Bastard’. It was found on fire on a Wigan rubbish tip in about 1967 by a man looking for car parts. It was published in 2007. Further manuscripts are scheduled for publication up to 2017.
In 1997 five unknown works were found in Lambeth Palace Library. His magnum opus is arguably The Kingdom of God, published in 2005.
He finished his last work Christian Ethicks: The Way to Blessedness, in his last summer (1674) and it was published in 1675.