|
|
The story of a young clergyman's loss of faith in his church who gives up everything to help the poor in the slums in the East End of London. A contemporary review in The Specatator lavishes praise:-
This is a very remarkable book... Profoundly as we differ from Mrs. Humphry Ward's criticism of Christianity, we recognise in her book one of the most striking pictures of a sincere religious ideal that has ever been presented to our generation under the disguise of the modern novel.
The author dedicated the novel to T.H. Green, an Oxford Professor of Moral Philosophy who showed a strong social commitment. In the novel he is represented by the character Henry Grey, who likewise is an influential figure that commands attention and respect, especially among students. At first, Elsmere finds his metaphysical argument difficult to follow, but realises that here was a strength of feeling and belief that could not be ignored. Another figure to be reckoned with in the novel is Elsmere's tutor, Edward Langham, who has the same love of life and its pleasures as that other influential Oxford figure, Walter Pater.
After university, Elsmere becomes a country parson and seems to have a idyllic setting for his life's work. His young bride, Catherine, is a devout Anglican Evangelical Christian and the young priest is able to combine parochial duties with the time for personal pursuit of historical and scientific study. It is in the library of the local squire, Roger Wendover, that some of the latent questions of his belief begin to grow. Here he reads some of the more radical contemporary criticisms of biblical texts. Understandably his devout wife is unable to come to terms with his subsequent actions and they are estranged.
The book became a bestseller and the appearance of pirated copies in America, leading to legal action, did nothing to dampen the public interest in the work. The statesman W.E. Gladstone wrote a lengthy review in The nineteenth century which attracted further attention and debate. It may have suffered the fate of the many other mid-Victorian novels dealing with a crisis of faith if it were not for the author's very capable treatment of personal drama, debate and description. Her style is summarised by Ernest Baker, in his series on The history of the English novel (1938):-
Mrs. Ward, in short, was a popularizer of recent religious history and the speculative differences underlying it; she knew how to make the history of ideas interesting to those who liked to think they were following intellectual and moral arguments when they were only treading the measures of an ordinary sentimental dance-tune.
A sample chapter of Robert Elsmere is available on this website.
The full text can also be read online or downloaded free of charge. It is in XHTML format, like this page. Please note the file size is 1661kb and it may take some time to open-up if you choose to read it online. Downloading for reading later may be the preferred option and this can be typically achieved by calling up an option box. If you have a mouse and it is configured for left click to select, right clicking the link may give you this option. Link to the full text of Robert Elsmere.
Page created 28 August 2003 and last updated
31 August 2003
For your literary enquiries and comments please see the Who to contact page.
Please read the general terms and conditions and about accessibility on this site, including the use of the UK government accesskeys system. Further details on ICRA labelling, visitor counts and EnrichUK may be obtained by following these external links:-
|
|