A thorough study of the six principal writers of the Catholic revival in English Literature - Newman, Hopkins, Belloc, Chesterton, Greene and Waugh. Beginning with Newman's conversion in 1845 and ending with Waugh's completion of the trilogy 'The Sword of Honour' in 1961, this book explores how Catholicism shaped the work of these six prominent writers. Ian Ker is a member of the theology faculty at Oxford University. He is well known as one of the leading authorities on the life and work of Cardinal John Henry Newman.

G. K. Chesterton is remembered as a brilliant creator of nonsense and satirical verse, author of the Father Brown stories and the innovative novel, The Man who was Thursday, and yet today he is not counted among the major English novelists and poets. However, this major new biography argues that Chesterton should be seen as the successor of the great Victorian prose writers, Carlyle, Arnold, Ruskin, and above all Newman. Chesterton's achievement as one of the great English literary critics has not hitherto been fully recognized, perhaps because his best literary criticism is of prose rather than poetry. Ian Ker remedies this neglect, paying particular attention to Chesterton's writings on the Victorians, especially Dickens. As a social and political thinker, Chesterton is contrasted here with contemporary intellectuals like Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells in his championing of democracy and the masses. Pre-eminently a controversialist, as revealed in his prolific journalistic output, he became a formidable apologist for Christianity and Catholicism, as well as a powerful satirist of anti-Catholicism. This full-length life of G. K. Chesterton is the first comprehensive biography of both the man and the writer. It draws on many unpublished letters and papers to evoke Chesterton's joyful humour, his humility and affinity to the common man, and his love of the ordinary things of life.

Mere Catholicism explains in easily accessible, non-technical language the fundamental doctrines of Catholicism. It also shows how these doctrines follow naturally from the fundamental doctrines common to orthodox Christians ("mere Christianity"). Catholicism can mystify or even repel other Christians, while its complexities can confuse Catholics themselves. Ian Ker's stimulating book makes Catholicism come alive as the fullness of Christianity.

An Anthology of Writings from 1483 to 1999 Firmly I Believe and Truly celebrates the depth and breadth of the spiritual, literary, and intellectual heritage of the Post-Reformation English Roman Catholic tradition in an anthology of writings that span a five hundred year period between William Caxton and Cardinal Hume. Intended as a rich resource for all with an interest in Roman Catholicism, the writings have been carefully selected and edited by a team of scholars with historical, theological, and literary expertise. Each author is introduced to provide context for the included extracts and the chronological arrangement of the anthology makes the volume easy to use whilst creating a fascinating overview of the modern era in English Catholic thought. The extracts comprise a wide variety writing genres; sermons, prayers, poetry, diaries, novels, theology, apologetics, works of controversy, devotional literature, biographies, drama, and essays. Includes writings by: John Colet, John Fisher, Thomas More, Robert Southwell, Philip Howard, Edmund Campion, John Gother, John Dryden, Mary Barker, Alexander Pope, Richard Challoner, Alban Butler, John Milner, Elizabeth Inchbald, Nicholas Wiseman, Margaret Mary Hallahan, A. W. N. Pugin, John Henry Newman, Henry Edward Manning, Frederick William Faber, Bertrand Wilberforce, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Vincent McNabb, Hilaire Belloc, Maurice Baring, G. K. Chesterton, R. A. Knox, J. R. R. Tolkien, Caryll Houselander, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, John Bradburne, Cardinal Hume

The written word is one of the defining elements of Christian experience. As vigorous in the 1st century as it is in the 21st, Christian literature has had a significant function in history, and teachers and students need to be reminded of this powerful literary legacy. Covering 2,000 years, The Encyclopedia of Christian Literature is the first encyclopedia devoted to Christian writers and books. In addition to an overview of the Christian literature, this two-volume set also includes 40 essays on the principal genres of Christian literature and more than 400 bio-bibliographical essays describing the principal writers and their works. These essays examine the evolution of Christian thought as reflected in the literature of every age. The companion volume also features bibliographies, an index, a timeline of Christian Literature, and a list of the greatest Christian authors. The encyclopedia will appeal not only to scholars and Christian evangelicals, but students and teachers in seminaries and theological schools, as well as to the growing body of Christian readers and bibliophiles.

Exotic, corrupt, and dangerous, Roman Catholicism functioned in the popular Victorian imagination as a highly sensationalized and implacably anti-English enemy. Maureen Moran’s lively study considers a wide range of key authors—including Charlotte Brontë, Robert Browning, Wilkie Collins, and George Eliot, as well as a number of non-canonical writers—to give a detailed account of the cultural tensions between Catholics and Protestants. Moran shows that rather than representing a traditional religious schism, the demonizing of Catholics resulted from secular fears over crime, sex, and violence.

A wide-ranging and impressive collection which illuminates the enduring relationship between the Church and literary creation.

Drawing substantially on the thoughts and words of Catholic writers and cultural commentators, Villis sheds new light on religious identity and political extremism in early twentieth-century Britain. The book constitutes a comprehensive study of the way in which British Catholic communities reacted to fascism both at home and abroad.

Exploring novels by Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence, Evelyn Waugh, and Sylvia Townsend Warner as political theology – works that imagine a resistance to the fusion of Christianity and patriotism which fuelled and supported the First World War – this book shows how we can gain valuable insights from their works for anti-militarist, anti-statist, and anti-nationalist efforts today. While none of the four novelists in this study were committed Christians during the 1920s, Andrews explores how their fiction written in the wake of the First World War operates theologically when it challenges English civil religion – the rituals of the nation that elevate the state to a form of divinity. Bringing these novels into a dialogue with recent political theologies by theorists and theologians including Giorgio Agamben, William Cavanaugh, Simon Critchley, Michel Foucault, Stanley Hauerwas and Jürgen Moltmann, this book shows the myriad ways that we can learn from the authors' theopolitical imaginations. Andrews demonstrates the many ways that these novelists issue a challenge to the problems with civil religion and the sacralized nation state and, in so doing, offer alternative visions to coordinate our inner lives with our public and collective actions.