Book Review: "The Fame of Blessed Thomas More" (1929)

Almost six years after the speeches in this book were delivered, Saint John Fisher and Saint Thomas More were canonized in Rome on May 19, 1935. The occasion of the speeches and the publication of them was the presentation of an exhibit of paintings, manuscripts, relics, and other materials related to Thomas More in Chelsea, where he had lived. It's also important to note that the year 1929 marked the 100th anniversary of the Catholic Emancipation Act, which was commemorated in this collection, Catholic Emancipation, 1829 to 1929: Essays by Various Writers with an Introduction by His Eminence Cardinal Bourne, which I reviewed in 2021.

Just to give you some context: Lillie Langtry, who might have been Edward VII then the Prince of Wales's mistress, died in 1929; Jean Simmons and Audrey Hepburn were born in 1929. George V, Edward VII's second son (1865-1936) was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India; Ramsey MacDonald led a Labor government starting in June; and on October 18, the London Stock Exchange experienced a "sharp fall" after Black Friday in the USA. On December 15, Pope Pius XI beatified 136 Martyrs of England and Wales (29 of which were canonized in 1970; Chesterton attended that 1929 beatification and wrote about in The Resurrection of Rome).

Reading this book requires an adjustment on the part of the reader because "Blessed" Thomas More's fame seemed more secure in 1929. Now we're still dealing with the images (on screen especially) of Saint Thomas More from Hilary Mantel's trilogy, based on what Travis Curtright contends are G.R. Elton's outdated and disproved views of Thomas Cromwell and Thomas More:

Because the plot of Wolf Hall relies on Elton’s characterizations of Cromwell and More, Mantel writes as if the last thirty years of research in the Tudor period never happened. Though many prominent historians of the period—such as John Guy, Brendan Bradshaw, and Eamon Duffy—have refuted Elton’s claims about More already, George Logan most recently assembled a team of international scholars to reassess More’s life, writings, and political actions in The Cambridge Companion to Thomas More (2011). These scholars put to rest the most inflammatory claims of Elton and his school. Instead, Logan’s team finds More to be a superlative humanist scholar and, as the chapter on statesmanship claims, the historical record reveals “a statesman of conscience” and one of “extraordinary insight and foresight.”

When reading, for example, R.W. Chamber's essay on "Sir Thomas More's Fame Among His Countrymen", we're made aware of how much has been accomplished since 1929 in the publication of Thomas More's works: the translations of his Latin works, the Yale University editions, the work of the Amici Thomae Mori societies, etc.  A new edition of More's works was forthcoming at the time from Eyre and Spottiswoode: The English Works of Thomas More, editors W.E. Campbell*, A.W. Reed, R. W. Chambers, and W.A.G. Doyle-Davidson, 2 volumes (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode Limited, 1931)

Contents and comments:

Introductory Essay: "Sir Thomas More's Fame Among His Countrymen" by R.W. Chambers (not part of the presentations made at the exhibition)

Chambers (1874-1942), was a friend of J.R.R. Tolkien and wrote Man's Unconquerable Mind, The Place of Thomas More in English Literature and History, and Thomas More.

"The Charge of Religious Intolerance" by Ronald Knox

In dealing with this accusation, Knox contrasts Cranmer with More: when Cranmer questioned Joan Bocher during the reign of Edward VI, they were comparing their private judgment as Joan was an Anabaptist. Cranmer brought her to the stake and even John Rogers thought burning at the stake appropriate for one found guilty of heresy. Knox argues that More was questioning--never with torture--those accused of violating heresy laws for the sake of the Common Good and the Church's "continuous tradition" (p. 52) He notes that Bocher, who pointed out that in 1546 Anne Askew had been found guilty of heresy for denying Transubstantiation, which by that time (1550) Cranmer also denied, saw "that complete toleration was the logical corollary of private judgment, and Cranmer did not." (p. 54)

"The Witness to Abstract Truth" by Hilaire Belloc

I think Belloc misses the mark slightly by not acknowledging that by upholding Papal Primacy More was upholding the Unity of the Church: that More knew once the Church in England was schismatic, the doctrines and Sacraments of the Catholic Church would fall away.

"A Turning Point in History" by G.K. Chesterton

The briefest and and best. Contains the famous line that Thomas More was "important today, but he is not as important now as he will be in 100 years from today.”

"A Great Lord Chancellor" by Lord Justice Russell

Russell (1867-1946), Frank Russell, Baron Russell of Killown, was Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, Lord Justice of Appeal, and Justice of the High Court (overlapping positions): he was a Catholic and argued for lifting the restriction on Catholics from including Masses for their Souls in their Wills in Parliament. That restriction was lifted in 1926.

He testifies that More was great Lord Chancellor because he heard and decided cases impartially and expeditiously; that he did not, unlike Wolsey before him, become wealthy through his office; not even his sons-in-law received any special treatment!

"A Catholic of the Renaissance" by Henry Browne, SJ

Browne (1853-1941) was a classical scholar; much interested in the Cause of the English Martyrs of England and Wales, he worked for the growth of Catholicism in England.

His essay contrasts the relative corruption of the hierarchy in England before the Reformation with the enduring devotion and practice of the Catholic Faith after Henry's break from the Church and the subsequent changes in doctrine and practice. There must have been, he avers, great devotion, in spite of bad examples, to the Church's practice in England for so many priests and laity to have remained true through decades and decades of persecution and prosecution. Thomas More is an example of that devotion.

"The Glory of Chelsea" by Reginald Blunt

Blunt, CBE, was the founder of the Chelsea Society (1927). 

He comments that he is not a Catholic, so does not concern himself with religious issues, but that he admires Thomas More as a good farmer, neighbor, and family man. He cites, in particular, when there was a fire on his farm and More was very concerned that the fire had harmed his neighbors. He wrote to Alice from Court, where he was detained on the King's business, to make sure they were taken care of, with supplies from his farm's store as needed.

"A National Bulwark against Tyranny" by Bede Jarrett, OP

Jarrett (1881-1934) was a historian and author; founder of Blackfriars Priory in Oxford (1921) and author of S. Antonino and Medieval Economics, Life of St. Dominic, and The English Dominicans, among many other works.

Why was it so necessary for Henry VIII to pursue the compliance of Thomas More and John Fisher? Why was Henry VIII afraid of More's silence? Jarrett suggests it was not because of political reasons; it was because of the national and international standing of More and Fisher as good, holy, and learned men, known far and wide as scholars. They were among the leaders of the Renaissance in England and like Colet, Linacre, Grocyn, and Lilly, they were devout Catholics. "He really was the head of the whole cultural society then existing in England" (p. 129). Remember that More had upheld the study of Greek and Latin pagan classics: he "shared to the full the Renaissance spirit" (ibid). Not to have More on his side--Henry could not abide that and had to get him out of the way--thus the particularly aimed Act of Attainder against him. It's Jarrett's judgment that More was "forced into prominence" (p. 131) even more through Henry's efforts, and that "his greatness came from the moment really that he went to prison" (p. 134), because before More had not sought such prominence and greatness, even as he worked to support his king and his Church and be the King's servant and God's first.

Both Jarrett and Knox present cogent arguments and impressed me the most.

Appendix I: Catalogue of the More Memorial Exhibition

Appendix II: A Short Bibliography of Books Relating to the Martyr (Compiled by *W.E. Campbell)

One of the reasons the book was published was to support the building fund for the Beaufort Street Convent, where the Sisters of the Adoration Reparatrice at that time maintained "ceaseless adoration by day and by night in reparation for the national crime of the Blessed Martyr's execution." The convent was founded in 1898, but the Sisters left the convent in 1975 and now it's the site of Allen Hall.

It's good of Cluny to make this rarity available again, just four years before we see how Chesterton's prediction comes true in 2029. Please note that I purchased the book.

Monsignor Knox and King Henry VI

If Henry VII would have had his way, we would be celebrating the feast of Henry VI today. The son of Henry V died on May 21, 1471 in the Tower of London, probably killed at the orders of the newly re-crowned King Edward IV (although Thomas More cites Richard, the Duke of York as the responsible party). The official version was that Henry VI died of melancholy after hearing about the results of the Battle of Tewkesbury, which the House of York won and his son Edward, the Prince of Wales, had been killed.

This blog explains some aspects of the development of Henry VI's cult and cause for canonization, which was of course, cut short by Henry VIII's English Reformation:

The great mystery of Henry VI’s posthumous popularity has been grappled with for centuries. Many distinguished historians have dismissed the cult as a purely political phenomenon, and at first look this explanation is rather appealing. At the time of Henry VI’s oddly suspicious death from “pure displeasure” in that most hospitable of structures, the Tower of London, England had been embroiled in a bloody civil war for twelve long years [1]. The War of the Roses was fought between the House of Lancaster (represented by poor Henry), and the House of York, led by King Edward IV. Likely killed at the hands of his York cousins, rumors quickly spread of Henry’s murder by the creepiest of English uncles, Richard III. Most significantly, the supposedly violent homicide of Henry VI saw him reimagined in popular medieval culture as an innocent martyr. And political martyrdom, in late medieval England, was a particularly transformative process. It turned the unsuspecting victim into an impressively sacred figure, and bestowed the deceased monarch with a legitimacy denied him in life. As such, the initial impetus for Henry’s cult did rely upon his sacred political martyrdom.

Henry VII, who was the Lancastrian King’s half nephew, reinforced and strengthened the political nature of Henry VI’s posthumous cult. Defeating Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, Henry Tudor shamelessly manipulated his uncle’s growing cultic popularity to legitimize his own claim to the throne. Not only was the long reigning “Martir by great Tormernting” continuously referred to in Henry VII’s inaugural pageants [2], the Tudor King also aggressively patronized the widespread cult, and petitioned three successive Popes to have his uncle canonized as a Saint. While Henry VI’s canonization was never secured, the process did produce a remarkable work titled The Miracles of King Henry VI [3]. This 1500 AD compilation of 174 miracle stories left out a staggering 300 accounts, and strongly suggests that Henry’s saintly popularity went much deeper than political manipulation.

The Miracles of King Henry VI demonstrates that the cult began, at least, with popular lay piety and not royal propaganda and patronage:

the English people worshipped Henry for his remarkable gentleness, compassion and leniency. Although odd qualities for a medieval King to possess, Henry’s renowned mercy and benevolence in life rendered him an extremely accessible royal figure. The late monarch was generous to the poor, commonly exempted dangerous criminals, and abhorred violence of any kind. As a Saint, he consequently appealed to those in great need of divine charity, which in bleak medieval times happened to be the majority of the English population. Saintly Henry aided criminals, madmen, plague sufferers, innocent children, lowly servants and stricken noblemen. The common theme in all his miracles was that his followers found themselves in critical emergencies, and yearned for divinely sympathetic intervention.

Henry VI posthumously provided such divine sympathetic intervention, and emerged as the patron saint of tragedy and all worldly suffering. During his catastrophic reign, Henry himself experienced extended bouts of mental illness, physical incapacitation and visible torment. His patent suffering invested the Lancastrian King with a unique saintly power, that of empathy. In The Miracles, Henry saves individuals from fatal fires, cures the terminally blind, and amazingly resurrects children from the dead. As a tormented monarch, Henry embodied both sacred power and profane suffering. His embodiment of sacral power and worldly misery explains much of his posthumous popularity, as Henry VI was never far from the minds of those in serious need.

Ronald Knox, the Catholic convert son of the evangelical Bishop of Manchester, developed a devotion to King Henry VI when he was at Eton, which Henry had founded in 1440 as The King's College of Our Lady of Eton besides Windsor. In 1923, just six years after he had become a Catholic and five years after becoming a Catholic priest, Cambridge University Press published his translation of The Miracles of King Henry VI. He also preached a sermon, included in the collection published by Ignatius Press, in which he asked the congregation to pray for the beatification of King Henry VI!

Well, even if Henry VII and Monsignor Ronald Knox had had their way and May 21 was the feast of King St. Henry VI, on this May 21, since it is on Monday the day after Pentecost, we would still be celebrating Mary, Mother of the Church, as determined by Pope Francis and the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. In view of the devotion King Henry VI had to Our Lady, he would be most satisfied.

Mater Ecclesiae, ora pro nobis!

Side-by-Side-by-Side Catholic Bibles

Matthew Schmitz praises Baronius Press for their Catholic Bible Online resource in this post on the First Things blog. The Catholic Bible Online features the Latin Vulgate, the Douay-Rheims translation, and the Ronald Knox translation, side-by-side-by-side, or you may read each one separately.

Since I'm going to Mass this morning at Blessed Sacrament and Father Jirak is offering Low Mass for the First Saturday of the month in the Extraordinary Form of the Latin Rite, I've linked the beginning of the eighth chapter of St. John's Gospel. Verses 1 through 11 are today's Gospel.

Baronius also publishes a hardcover edition of The Holy Bible with the Vulgate and Douay-Rheims side-by-side.

The Clementine Vulgate was proclaimed the official Latin Bible of the Church after the Reformation. From St. Jerome's time, through the Middle Ages, until vernacular editions were introduced, educated Catholics throughout the world were familiar with the Vulgate.

Those familiar with the Douay Rheims Bible will know that it is one of the most beautiful and accurate Bible translations available today – a word for word translation of the Clementine Vulgate.

Having both Bibles side by side allows us to see exactly where the vernacular translation came from. Even those with limited Latin skills will be able to follow along, using the Douay Rheims translation as an aid. You'll see how the Douay Rheims is a literal translation of the classic Vulgate.

It is a beautiful, captivating read. The Biblia Sacra is not difficult to understand and it doesn't take much study of Latin to be able to get through the texts passably.

Included in this Bible are Challoner's notes, and the texts found in the appendix to the Vulgate, namely 3 and 4 Esdras and the prayer of Manasses (in Latin with an English translation). This makes the Bible totally comprehensive and ideal for theology students.

And Baronius publishes the Ronald Knox translation in a separate volume, so this free resource gives us the opportunity to see how his translation compares with Vulgate and the Douay-Rheims. Baronius describes the history of Knox's translation:

The translation of the Bible by Ronald Knox was officially made at the request of the Bishops of England and Wales, although Knox had wanted to try his hand at updating the language of the Bible for some time.

It had been the desire of a succession of bishops for almost a 100 years to create a new Bible translation to replace the Douay Rheims edition. This Bible which had served English speaking Catholics since the time of the reformation had undergone several revisions, but was filled with archaic language, making it incomprehensible in a few places.

Originally, it was hoped that Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman, the most famous convert to Catholicism of the 19th Century would translate the Bible, but this project was never begun. In his book, The Idea of a University, Blessed John Henry Newman pointed out the “great difficulty in combining the two necessary qualities, fidelity to the original and purity in the adopted vernacular.”

I reviewed the Knox translation several years ago.

WWI Poet, Siegfried Sassoon, RIP

Siegfried Sassoon, the great World War I poet and Catholic convert, died on September 1, 1967--he was born on September 8, 1886, so he almost made it to his 81st birthday. There is a new biography of the poet, heroic soldier, novelist, and pacifist, published by The Overlook Press:

Published to coincide with the centennial of the outbreak of the First World War, Siegfried Sassoon is the first complete biography of arguably the greatest English-language war poet. Hailed as “invaluable” by the Times and “thorough and perceptive” by the Observer, Siegfried Sassoon encompasses the poet’s complete life and works, from his patriotic youth that led him to the frontline, to the formation of his anti-war convictions, great literary friendships, and flamboyant love affairs. Written by biographer and scholar Jean Moorcroft Wilson, this single-volume opus also includes never-before-published poems that have only just come to light. With over a decade’s research, and unparalleled access to Sassoon’s private correspondence, Wilson presents the complete portrait, both elegant and heartfelt, of an extraordinary man, and an extraordinary poet.

“Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin they think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.” —Siegfried Sassoon

Jean Moorcroft Wilson lectures in English Literature at Birkbeck College, University of London. She is married to Virginia Woolfe's nephew, with whom she runs a publishing house. She is considered the foremost expert in Siegfried Sassoon.

He became a Catholic in 1957, and Joseph Pearce provides some background to his conversion:

The dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima inspired Sassoon to the same heights of horrified creativity as it had inspired Sitwell in the composition of her "three poems of the Atomic Age" . . .  Sassoon's "Litany of the Lost" employed resonant religious imagery as a counterpoint to the post-war pessimism and alienation engendered by the descent from world war to Cold War. As with the previous war, the world had emerged from the nightmare of conflict into the desert of despair, transforming "wasteland" to nuclear waste. 

The ending of the second of the century's global conflagrations marked the beginning of Sassoon's final approach to the Catholic faith. Influenced to a degree by Catholic friends such as Ronald Knox and Hilaire Belloc, but to a far greater degree by the experience of his own life, he was received into the Church in September 1957, shortly after his 71st birthday. After a lifetime of mystical searching he had finally found his way Home.  

During his first Lent as a Catholic, Sassoon wrote "Lenten Illuminations," a candid account of his conversion which invites obvious comparisons with T.S. Eliot's "Ash Wednesday." The last decade of his life, like the last decades of the Rosary he came to love, was a quiet meditation on the glorious mysteries of faith. As ever, his meditations were expressed in memorable verse, particularly in the peaceful mysticism of "A Prayer at Pentecost," "Arbor Vitae," and "A Prayer in Old Age."  

In 1960 Sassoon selected 30 of his poems for a volume entitled The Path to Peace, which was essentially an autobiography in verse. From the earliest sonnets of his youth to the religious poetry of his last years, Sassoon's intensely personal and introspective verse offered a sublime reflection of a life's journey in pursuit of truth. These, and not his diaries, his letters, or his prose, are the precious jewels of enlightenment that point to the soul within the man.

UPDATE: I looked at this biography in our local B&N bookstore yesterday: the author notes that Sassoon's conversion made him very happy for the rest of his life. He encountered some of the usual misunderstanding and anti-Catholic response to his conversion, but also made some great new contacts, particularly at Stanbrook Abbey. Joining the Catholic Church transformed Sassoon's moral and spiritual life.

Happy 125th Birthday, Ronald Knox!

Baronius Press has a major announcement:

In celebration of the 125th anniversary of the birthday of Ronald Knox on the 17th February 2013, Baronius Press announced today that the text of the Knox Bible translation will be published on Newadvent.org — one of the largest Catholic websites in the English speaking world.

Baronius Press’ editor in chief Dr. John Newton said: "Since this edition came back into print — after an absence from our shelves of many decades — it has again been lauded as one of the finest 20th century Bible translation by Cardinals, Bishops and biblical experts alike. The clarity and beauty of this translation will help Catholics to deepen their faith and knowledge of scripture, especially during this year of Faith."

Kevin Knight of New Advent said he was delighted to be able to offer the Knox Bible to his readers. He commented: "We are happy to be able to offer the Knox Bible translation freely to our readers. This is one of the most elegant and readable translations that I have come across and we will be promoting it widely on our website".

The Knox Bible translation was described as "a masterful translation of the Bible" by Time Magazine and was the first vernacular version to be approved for liturgical use in the 20th century. It has featured on EWTN, received praise from Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, Archbishop Vincent Nichols, Dr. Rowan Williams and Dr. Scott Hahn among others. It has also received many positive reviews from Catholic Biblical scholars and writers.

I reviewed the new edition last year. More about Monsignor Ronald Knox here.

Book Review: The Holy Bible, Knox Version

Baronius Press contacted me and asked me to review their new edition of The Holy Bible in the Knox Translation:

The Knox Bible is the ideal translation for those looking to deepen their understanding of the Holy Scriptures. It was hailed as the finest translation of the 20th Century, approved for liturgical use and was endorsed by Pope Pius XII, Archbishop Fulton Sheen and many more.

In the early 20th century, Msgr. Ronald Knox embarked on an entirely new English Bible. He wanted a Bible that did not merely translate the original but made it read as if an Englishman had written it. His translation is spiritual and literary, graceful and lyrical, making it one of the most beautiful vernacular versions of the Holy Bible.

The unique features of the Knox Bible are:

~Translated from the Latin Vulgate and compared with the Greek and Hebrew texts single handedly by Ronald Knox over nine years.
~Uses timeless English, which is both sacral and reverent.
~Set in a single-column format with verse references placed at the side of the text in order to provide a clear and easily readable Bible.
~The full Bible is now available again for the first time in over 50 years, in an edition from Baronius Press, beautifully bound in leather with gilt edges.
~Included with this new edition is a paperback edition of On Englishing the Bible (5.5" x 8", 72 pages) in which Msgr. Knox describes his account of the ordeal, which manages to be both illuminating and full of his wit. Anyone wishing to know more about Knox's translation – and the problems involved in rendering the sacred Scriptures into the vernacular – will be fascinated to hear from the translator himself how he tackled this mammoth project.

So, it's another mammoth project for me to review this Knox version of The Holy Bible--how do I review The Holy Bible? To start, some comments on the quality of the published book produced by Baronius Press. The book as an object is beautiful: from the elegant endpapers to the weight of the paper and its gilt edges, well-bound and pleasing to hold and read. I have had to get used to the single-column format. In the Book of Psalms, I missed the poetic formatting of centered, broken lines.

As to the Knox version and translation, I sampled several favorite passages: The Twenty-Third Psalm, the Suffering Servant verses in Isaiah, the Book of Job, the infancy narrative of St. Luke's Gospel, the Passion narrative in St. John's, and many passages in the Epistles of St. Paul. And I read his book On Englishing the Bible--I liked his comment about the King James Version of The Holy Bible: "The Authorized Version is good English only because English writers, for centuries, have treated it as the standard of good English. Of itself, it is no better English than the Douay . . ." ("Some New Testament Problems", p. 21).

I think Knox achieved what he set as his goal in the Epistles; he comments on the length of St. Paul's sentences and he manages that length well, bringing clarity to some difficult passage of the Epistles. This is beautiful edition of The Holy Bible and one I look forward to using in my devotions for the Year of Faith!

Penelope Knox Fitzgerald, RIP (April 28, 2000)

Penelope Fitzgerald was a late bloomer as a published author. Just after she died in 2000, a biography of her father and her uncles was reissued: The Knox Brothers. Richard Eder reviewed the book in The New York Times several months after her death. He situated his review in the context of her development as a writer:

Fitzgerald died last spring at 83, leaving a group of short stories that will come out in the fall. Meanwhile a new edition of the family biography, ''The Knox Brothers,'' has been published by Counterpoint, partly revised by the author in collaboration with her longtime American editor, Christopher Carduff. The original version appeared in the United States a quarter-century ago, well before the novels that would gradually win attention. It sold only a few thousand copies and received little notice.
          It is well worth notice; both for itself and for the light it casts on an author's evolution -- particularly such a late evolution -- into what she would become. In its own right ''The Knox Brothers'' is a lively account of two generations of a remarkable English family straddling the divide between late Victorian and Edwardian. Edmund Knox, Fitzgerald's grandfather, was a staunch Church of England clergyman, a Low Church doctrinal conservative with a social conscience that led him to resign the rural parish where his children blissfully grew up for a gritty slum outside Birmingham. His energy and devotion led to eventual elevation as Bishop of Manchester. Fitzgerald portrays a man whose stern rectitude was joined to the conviction that fun was essential and that children should be very happy (the late in late Victorian: think Lewis Carroll). By and large his were.
         Happiness, at least, was their inheritance; so was intellectual ardor, combativeness and a moral energy that propelled them onto the world at eccentric, sometimes painful angles. Edmund Knox (nicknamed Evoe), Fitzgerald's father, was a journalist who rose to be the editor of Punch, a post well paid and refulgent. Its incumbent was known, part seriously, as King of Fleet Street.
         Dillwyn, known as Dilly, was a Cambridge Greek scholar co-opted from his lifelong passion into an almost lifelong post as cryptographer for the intelligence services, at first in the famously cryptic Room 40 and in World War II at Bletchley Park. There he played an important role (Fitzgerald tries but fails quite to explain it) in cracking the Nazi's Enigma codes. The two brothers were unbelievers, mild and truculent respectively, thus putting them at odds with the bishop. And also with their younger brothers, Wilfred and Ronald, Anglican clergymen both, until Ronald converted and became a celebrated Roman Catholic priest, apologist and translator of a Catholic Bible. That put them at odds with one another as well; and in the case of Ronald, with their father, who cut him out of his will.

The Guardian reviewed her oeuvre in her obituary:

The novelist and biographer Penelope Fitzgerald, who has died aged 83, was one of the most distinctive and elegant voices in contemporary British fiction. Her novels, spare, immaculate masterpieces (few of them exceed 200 pages), divide into two sections; an earlier group loosely based on her own experiences, and a later group, in which she moves to other countries and periods. In 1979, she won the Booker Prize for her novel Offshore.
"Reading a Penelope Fitzgerald novel," observed Sebastian Faulks, "is like being taken for a ride in a peculiar kind of car. Everything is of top quality - the engine, the coachwork and the interior all fill you with confidence. Then, after a mile or so, someone throws the steering-wheel out of the window." . . .
What is striking is the accuracy of her observation, the aesthetically satisfying precision with which, stylistically, the arrow goes straight into the centre of the gold. The economy with which she achieved her effects - "I always feel the reader is very insulted by being told too much," she said - and her ability to combine a microscopic with a panoramic perspective, made most other contemporary novels appear flatulent and over-written. Fitzgerald has been compared in her qualities of social comedy and irony to Jane Austen. The comparison is just in many ways, but ultimately unsatisfactory, for she had a metaphysical quality which is less apparent in Jane Austen - and Jane Austen was not the only novelist of that period by whom she was influenced. She spoke with enthusiasm of the way in which Sir Walter Scott mixed up fictional and real characters, and this is reflected in the appearance of the dying Gramsci, in Innocence, and of Fichte, Goethe and Schlegel in The Blue Flower.

She was named one of the Fifty Greatest British Writers since 1945 by The London Times in 2008.

Ronald Knox, February 17, 1888

Ronald Knox's conversion to Catholicism shocked the Anglican community. After all, his father was the Bishop of Manchester, an evangelical Anglican! He was born on this day in 1888. He became a Catholic in 1917, a Catholic priest in 1919 and died on August 24, 1957.

David Rooney, author of a recent biography, The Wine of Certitude: A Literary Biography of Ronald Knox, places Knox in the context of other defections from the Church of England:

The English Catholic literary revival had already been thriving for almost three-quarters of a century when Ronald Knox, fourth son of the Anglican Bishop of Manchester, was received into the Roman communion on September 22, 1917. It had begun with the conversions of the clergymen John Henry Newman and Henry Edward Manning, both later to become cardinals, and the layman William George Ward, whose son and granddaughter would carry on the apostolate of the pen, the former through books and essays, and the latter primarily as cofounder with her husband of the most famous Catholic publishing house of the twentieth century.

In the early 1900s, that world of letters was the domain of Hilaire Belloc and G.K. Chesterton (though Chesterton's formal entry into the Church wouldn't come until 1922), and of the prolific but short-lived novelist Robert Hugh Benson, himself the convert son of an Archbishop of Canterbury. It was a world in which many well-educated men and women had come to see the Church of England as insufficiently countercultural in the face of materialism, agnosticism, and alternating moods of self-pride and despair, and who then saw in Rome a constancy and a consistency betokening a sure guide to the meaning of the Gospel message. There were converts among scientists, among historians, among novelists, even among actors, and the impression they produced, especially during the decades of Knox's prominence (the 1910s through the 1950s) was fortifying to those already in the Church, encouraging to those thinking about conversion, and vaguely alarming to those who retained the prejudice against Rome so thoroughly inbred in the nominally tolerant, vestigially Protestant culture that dominated the printed and spoken media.

Knox completed Blessed John Henry Newman's planned translation of the Jerome Vulgate into English in 1945 (New Testament) and 1950 (Old Testament). Serving as a chaplain to Catholic students at the University of Cambridge, Knox wrote apologetic and catechetical works such as The Hidden Stream and The Belief of Catholics. My favorite is his collection of homilies about saints, including several English martyrs, Captive Flames.

Ignatius Insight has a page dedicated to his life and works. There is a Ronald Knox Society of North America. I enjoyed both Evelyn Waugh's biography and Penelope Fitzgerald's study of her father and three uncles in The Knox Brothers. She was the daughter of Edmund Knox, the editor of Punch and the niece of cryptographer Alfred Knox, Bible scholar and Anglican monk Wilfred Knox, as well as Ronald Knox.