Upon his conversion, Merton left a promising literary career, resigned his position as a teacher of English literature at St. Bonaventure's College in Olean, New York, and entered the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in rural Kentucky.

"[6] Later, Dom Frederic Dunne, the abbot at the abbey, who had received him as a novice, suggested that Merton write out his life story, which he reluctantly began, but once he did, it started "pouring out".

Soon he was filling up his journals with the work that led to the book which Time magazine later described as having "redefined the image of monasticism and made the concept of saintliness accessible to moderns".

[4][7][8] In Merton's journals, the first entry mentioning the project is dated March 1, 1946, but many scholars think he started writing it earlier than that, because the draft (more than 600 pages) reached his agent Naomi Burton Stone by October 21, 1946.

[9][10][11][12] In late 1946, the partly approved text of The Seven Storey Mountain was sent to Naomi Burton, his agent at Curtis Brown literary agency, who then forwarded it to the renowned book editor Robert Giroux at Harcourt Brace publishers.

Merton appealed (in French) to the Abbot General in France, who concluded that an author's style was a personal matter, and subsequently the local censor also reversed his opinion, paving the way for the book's publication.

[13] At the time Rice published his opinion, he was unable to provide any proof; however, since then early drafts of the autobiography have surfaced and prove that parts of the manuscript were either deleted or changed.

Originally, it began "When a man is conceived, when a human nature comes into being as an individual, concrete, subsisting thing, a life, a person, then God's image is minted into the world.

"[15] In the middle of 1948, advance proofs were sent to Evelyn Waugh, Clare Boothe Luce, Graham Greene and Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, who responded with compliments and quotations which were used on the book jacket and in some advertisements.

[citation needed] In The Seven Storey Mountain, Merton seems to be struggling to answer a spiritual call; the worldly influences of his earlier years have been compared with the story of Augustine of Hippo's conversion as described in his Confessions.

[19] The Seven Storey Mountain has been credited as being the first major Catholic book to achieve widespread popularity in America, breaking the liberal Protestant monopoly on middlebrow spirituality.

[24][25] Various writers have noted the irony of his life's tragic conclusion, given that The Seven Storey Mountain closes by admonishing the reader to "learn to know the Christ of the burnt men" (see, e.g., The Man in the Sycamore Tree, 1979).