Author: DAVIES, Charles Maurice.
Title: Heterodox London: or, Phases of Free Thought in the Metropolis.
Description: London, Tinsley 1874. Two volumes octavo publisher's brown cloth blocked in black and gilt. A quite good pair. ¶ First edition. I must admit I took no notice of Davies' more successful books 'Orthodox London' and 'Unorthodox London' in the past, dismissing them as church stuff. Thanks to an article by Arnold Hunt in the Book Collector, in their handy occasional series 'Uncollected Authors', I learnt that both Davies and his books are more interesting than that. Davies was an Anglican cleric who turned to scribbling and ended up a disgrace. His 'London' books are frontline, occasionally undercover, reportage of the wild and woolly boomtime spiritual life of London. In 'Heterodox London', apparently the least successful of the series (it never made it into a second edition - the Freethought crowd bought and remaindered a fair number of copies), he has turned to the secularists, the free-thinkers, working-men's associations, radicals, atheists, vegetarians, socialists, spiritualists ... rabble rousers of all creeds. He attends a debate of the Dialectical Society on cremation, listens to Bradlaugh argue away the existence of God, attends a Positivist school. Davies is chatty, amiable, tolerant and thorough and the reader gets the impression that the further he travels from the acceptable the more he likes it. And it seems to have been true. His final disgrace in the church was not due to any forgiveable heresy - he was accused of the attempted rape of a teenage girl - but he continued to regard himself as a churchman; the minister of an increasingly bizarre personal church. Hunt's article obliges with excerpts from reviews of his books, appreciative to the first but increasingly scathing or indignant as each book appeared. This one was "vulgar, often offensive" and evil in "the undue prominence it gives to nobodies and their very unimportant opinions" (Pall Mall Gazette and Tinsley's Magazine respectively).
Keywords: social history c19th England religion reform progress
Title: Heterodox London: or, Phases of Free Thought in the Metropolis.
Description: London, Tinsley 1874. Two volumes octavo publisher's brown cloth blocked in black and gilt. A quite good pair. ¶ First edition. I must admit I took no notice of Davies' more successful books 'Orthodox London' and 'Unorthodox London' in the past, dismissing them as church stuff. Thanks to an article by Arnold Hunt in the Book Collector, in their handy occasional series 'Uncollected Authors', I learnt that both Davies and his books are more interesting than that. Davies was an Anglican cleric who turned to scribbling and ended up a disgrace. His 'London' books are frontline, occasionally undercover, reportage of the wild and woolly boomtime spiritual life of London. In 'Heterodox London', apparently the least successful of the series (it never made it into a second edition - the Freethought crowd bought and remaindered a fair number of copies), he has turned to the secularists, the free-thinkers, working-men's associations, radicals, atheists, vegetarians, socialists, spiritualists ... rabble rousers of all creeds. He attends a debate of the Dialectical Society on cremation, listens to Bradlaugh argue away the existence of God, attends a Positivist school. Davies is chatty, amiable, tolerant and thorough and the reader gets the impression that the further he travels from the acceptable the more he likes it. And it seems to have been true. His final disgrace in the church was not due to any forgiveable heresy - he was accused of the attempted rape of a teenage girl - but he continued to regard himself as a churchman; the minister of an increasingly bizarre personal church. Hunt's article obliges with excerpts from reviews of his books, appreciative to the first but increasingly scathing or indignant as each book appeared. This one was "vulgar, often offensive" and evil in "the undue prominence it gives to nobodies and their very unimportant opinions" (Pall Mall Gazette and Tinsley's Magazine respectively).
Keywords: social history c19th England religion reform progress
Price: AUD 250.00 = appr. US$ 172.97 Seller: Richard Neylon, Bookseller
- Book number: 8453
- Book number: 8453