- Robert Elsmere
Robert Elsmere is a novel by Mrs. Humphrey Ward published in 1888. It was immediately successful, quickly selling over a million copies and gaining the admiration of
Henry James . [Ashton 72] Inspired by the religious crises of early Victorian clergymen such as her father Tom Arnold,Arthur Hugh Clough , andJames Anthony Froude (particularly as expressed in the latter's novel "The Nemesis of Faith "), it is about an Oxford clergyman who begins to doubt the doctrines of the Anglican Church after encountering the writings of German rationalists like Schelling andDavid Strauss . Instead of succumbing toatheism orRoman Catholicism , however, Elsmere takes up a "constructive liberalism" (which Ward received fromThomas Hill Green ) stressing social work amongst the poor and uneducated. Ward was inspired to write "Robert Elsmere" after hearing a sermon byJohn Wordsworth in which he argued that religious unsettlement, such as that experienced in England throughout the nineteenth century, leads to sin; Ward decided to respond by creating a sympathetic, loosely fictionalized account of the people involved in this unsettlement at the present, including her friendsBenjamin Jowett ,Mark Pattison , and her uncleMatthew Arnold . [Ashton 83-4]The novel was the subject of a famous review by
William Gladstone in which he criticized the novel's advocacy of the "dissociation of the moral judgment from a special series of religious formulae." [Ward, Qtd. in Ashton 78] In a more jocular manner,Oscar Wilde in his essay "The Decay of Lying " famously quipped that "Robert Elsmere" was "simply Arnold's "Literature and Dogma" with the literature left out." [Qtd in Ashton 73]References
*cite book |last=Ashton |first=Rosemary |editor=Jasper and Wright |title=The Critical Spirit and the Will to Believe |date=1989 |publisher=St. Martins |location=New York |isbn= |pages= |chapter=Doubting Clerics: From James Anthony Froude to Robert Elsmere via George Eliot
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