Customer Reviews

Literary Converts Pb

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This book is a fascinating and well-written exploration of the 20th-century Christian literary and artistic revival in England that arose in response to the prevailing secularism of the age. It focuses on Christian converts, mostly Catholic and some Anglican, among them Oscar Wilde, G.K. Chesterton (who seems to have influenced almost all of the others), Evelyn Waugh, T.S. Eliot, C.S. Lewis, Edith Sitwell, Graham Greene, Muriel Spark, E.F. Schumacher, Alec Guinness and Malcolm Muggeridge. There's also the occasional cradle Catholic (Hilaire Belloc), childhood convert (J.R.R. Tolkien) or cradle Anglican (Dorothy L. Sayers), along with non-Christians such as H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw, all of whose lives intersected with and influenced those of the converts. Joseph Pearce's writing is clear, pleasant and literate, making this an irresistible read for Catholics and other Christians, especially those who are also Anglophiles. If you enjoy this book, you might also want to read Mr. Pearce's biographies of Tolkien and Chesterton.

A friend loaned me this book. I read it and loved it so much that I went out and bought my own copy (and I rarely buy hardcover books!). This is a wonderful introduction to English Christian writers (mostly converts) of the twentieth century. It is an introduction only, for further details about each one you'll have to find individual biographies. The book discusses the impact of the time period on various people in a way that really illuminated some events in history for me. The biggest frustration that I had after reading this book is that so many of the authors mentioned are largely out of print and our local libraries don't have their books either. I'm still trying to track down Robert Hugh Benson's Lord of the World. But I have managed to read some Knox, and a lot more Chesterton after reading this book.

If you want to know why some Christians supported Franco, why the post World War I generation was so disillusioned, and why a lot of very bright young men and women became Christian in an age when many were turning their back on the Church this is a book that touches on all of these issues.

Just be prepared for frustration when you can't easily find books by the authors that Pearce is writing about.

I picked it up over the weekend and was fascinated by Pierce's portrait of the 20th century Christian literary world. I could be very wrong, but I have trouble imagining any of the contemporary Christian writers interacting much with each other. But early in the 20th century, it seems things were much different. I never guessed that writers as diverse as Lewis, Sayers, Tolkien, Williams, Waugh, Chesterton, Greene, and Eliot would interact so much with each other. Just reading the correspondence between these literary giants is a joy.

Joseph Pearce has built a strong reputation by writing wonderful biographies of Catholic literary greats. His volumes on Chesterton and Belloc are particularly noteworthy. But in "Literary Converts" we are treated to an excellent survey of the large number of English literary greats who either converted from the Anglican Church to Catholicism, became Catholics after having no faith at all, or otherwise embraced Christianity in the first half of the twentieth century. Evelyn Waugh, G.K. Chesterton, Robert Hugh Benson, T.S. Eliot, Hillaire Belloc and many other colorful characters appear throughout the book.

Perhaps the best way to read Pearce is to begin with Literary Converts and then read his biographies on single subjects like Belloc, Chesterton, and Tolkien for more detail. Once you read one, I think you'll come back for more.

Starting with Oscar Wilde (of all people) and ending more or less with the rather sad deaths of Evelyn Waugh, Hugh Ross Williamson, and Alec Guiness, Joseph Pearce has created an enjoyable, readable, and enormously fun history of English converts and near-converts to Catholicism. It's hard to even recall how many names wander about this book. There are so many of them - Chesterton & Belloc, of course, but also Waugh, C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, Ronald Knox, Roy Campbell, Graham Greene, Dorothy Parker and many others wander in and out of the narrative. His writing style is very rapid - some chapters are only a few pages long, and the book is a very quick read. More an introduction than in-depth biographies, the author aims at breath rather then depth. As he has written many other biographies on the same subjects and includes many footnoted sources, if you want more info you can easily find it. One complaint is a total lack of goodies aside from the footnotes mentioned above -no forward or intro, no conclusion, no photos, and, what really would have been helpful, no list of works these authors wrote.

The star of the book, if he can be called such, is Chesterton. Through his personality, writing, and wit, he seems to have drawn more converts to the Catholic Church than all of the others combined. Ironically enough, Chesterton did not convert until 1922, only 14 years before his death and long after many were persuaded to join through his writings. His writings pop up over and over, long after his death, and I suspect he will continue to draw in converts far into the future - the author himself converted because of reading Chesterton.

I bought the book with the idea of entering those great minds and their struggles with conversion amid opposition and rejecttion. But Pearce's books is a mountain of scattered information about these monumental figures. I struggled to finish it each time I took to reading it since, I would get lost with the too abundant disgresions/distractions from the person he is dealing with at the time. I do find the book a great piece of research, not of literature (so disordered! ) and came out with a feeling of being shorthanded in the issue of their motives. It's a GOOD portrait of the times when they were alive and changing our society. All in all I do not recomend it for gaining insight in the lives of these writers, but good for a glimpse at their times and the cultural environmet. Sorry.

Noted biographer, Joseph Pearce, adds to and moves beyond his biographies of G.K. Chesterton and J.R.R. Tolkien with this wonderful collection.

Pearce examines the spiritual lives of some of the greatest writers: Oscar Wilde, Evelyn Waugh, C.S. Lewis, Malcolm Muggeridge, Graham Greene, Edith Sitwell, Siegfried Sassoon, Hilaire Belloc, Dorothy Sayers, T.S. Eliot, and of course Gilbert and Tolkien as well.

The book takes a look at what inspired these great writers, as well as the role played by non-Christian converts H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw in the religious debate.

Throughout the twentieth century, many of England's key literary figures converted to Catholicism and the Anglo-Catholic wing of the Church of England. This book neatly traces their spiritual journeys, and how they profoundly influenced each other along the way. Pearce devotes attention to such giants as Hilaire Belloc (a rare literary cradle Catholic), Chesterton, Ronald Knox, T. S. Eliot, Evelyn Waugh, Edith Sitwell, C. S. Lewis and Alec Guinness, and also covers many of the lesser known and under appreciated poets, writers, and actors of the time. For some, the decision to convert took a few years, for others nearly a lifetime. Some came from positions of hardened atheism or agnosticism, others were disaffected or perfunctory Protestants. Some came to the Church as a result of suffering or loss, others from a cool and intellectual study of theology and history. Pearce quotes heavily in his book-perhaps too heavily-but there are several quotations from these brilliant people that made me think "Aha!" or "That's what I've been trying to say!" In particular, I was amazed to see the far-reaching influence of Belloc and Chesterton, two really magnificent thinkers who are hardly known today. All in all, I felt completely immersed in the thought and feeling of the time, so greatly influenced by fanatical political systems, gross inequality of wealth, two world wars and atomic bombs. The converts were reacting to a fatalistic determinism and materialism that seemed to be stealing the soul of humanity, as expressed in such poems as Eliot's "The Waste Land" and "The Hollow Men". For many people of the time, there seemed to be a choice between communism and fascism, or between communism and capitalism. As Belloc and Chesterton saw early on, such things were false dichotomies. The way of Faith, the return to a culture built on Christian foundations, is another choice, and the only one that can work to the benefit of all men.

Intellectual and inspirational too. Packed with info on great authors I was unfamiliar with, like Fr. Knox. Now I want to get one of his books!

In this book Joseph Pearce performs a remarkable feat that brilliantly illuminates the spiritual content of twentieth-century British and American literature. Pearce traces the often convoluted network of intellectual interactions that led so many famous authors to convert to Roman Catholicism or Anglo Catholicism. The pattern began in the nineteenth-century with converts such as John Henry Newman and Gerard Manley Hopkins, but Pearce begins his narrative with the stunning deathbed conversion of Oscar Wilde in 1900. He soon is investigating the enormously influencial writings of G. K. Chesterton and his allies Hilaire Belloc and Maurice Baring. Rebelling against the despair of materialistic thought and the spiritual havoc wreaked on the world by a loss of Christian moral guideposts, the trickle of literary converts soon grew into a deluge that included some of the most celebrated writers of the time--T.S. Eliot, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, C.S. Lewis, Dorothy Sayers, Ronald Knox, Edith Sitwell, Malcolm Muggeridge, Siegfried Sassoon, Thomas Merton, and many others. Pearce's fascinating account also includes "birth Catholics" such as J.R.R. Tolkien, historians and philosophers such as Christopher Dawson and Jacques Maritain, as well as non-literay converts such as the actor Alec Guinness.