Literary Converts: Spiritual Inspiration in an Age of Unbelief

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.