Anglo-Catholic in Religion

`A much-awaited, very welcome and timely book.'---Ronald Schuchard, Emory University

`An elegant, lucid, and meticulously researched exposition of the specific nature and history of Anglo-Catholicism.'---Manju Jain, University of Delhi

`An important and necessary book: powerfully and persuasively argued, richly informative.'---Jason Harding, Durham University

`Barry Spurr's "Anglo-Catholic in Religion": T.S. Eliot and Christianity is by far the best study of its formidable subject: erudite, in full command of the detail, and in every respect honorable. Much and properly indebted to Eliot's correspondence with Mary Trevelyan, the book brings forward remarkably cogent and persuasive materials on Eliot's belief and his daily practices as a Christian. The "sequence which culminates in faith" has never been so clarified, even if we allow - as we should - for the darknesses of doubt and weariness in Eliot's life. On themes with which we are more-or-less familiar, such as the Unitarianism of Eliot's family, Irving Babbitt's Humanism, Harvard's Pragmatism, Bergson's Bergsonism, Bradley's Idealism, the English mystics - Spurr presents more aspects of these than one would have thought possible. His commentaries on "Journey of the Magi" and later devotional poems are endlessly perceptive and far-reaching. I thought I knew "Ash-Wednesday" well; but on the evidence of Spurr's researches, not well enough. The book is a most notable achievement.'---Denis Donoghue, New York University

This definitive study of Eliot's Anglo-Catholic belief and practice explores how the poet's religion shaped his life and work for almost forty years until his death in 1965. Spurr characterises Eliot's formal adoption of Anglo-Catholicism, in 1927, as the culmination of his intellectual, cultural, artistic, spiritual and personal development to that point and then demonstrates how Anglo-Catholic doctrinal, devotional and social principles influenced the subsequent life, thought and writing (in poetry, drama and prose) of one of the greatest poets and thinkers of the twentieth century.

Barry Spurr is Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Sydney. He has published extensively on Renaissance and Modernist poetry, religious literature and liturgical language. He is the author of books on studying poetry, Lytton Strachey's prose, poetry about the Virgin Mary, and Anglican and Roman Catholic liturgical language reform.