Author: Joseph Henry Shorthouse

Publisher:

Published: 1902

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13:

"Shorthouse (1834-1903) was born and died in Birmingham, the eldest son of Joseph Shorthouse and his wife, Mary Ann, both of whom belonged to the Society of Friends. Joseph had inherited a chemical works and at sixteen, his son went into this family business. He had, however, been much attracted to literary work, reading widely, and writing for the Friends' Essay Society. An epileptic attack in 1862 left him invalided, and with time and resources from his family business, he started to write a Philosophical Romance, in 1866, much influenced by Ruskin, the Pre-Raphaelites and his conception of seventeenth-century Anglicanism. He worked at this novel for ten years, finishing in 1876 but failing to generate any commercial enthusiasm. It lay dormant until 1880 and was published privately in Birmingham in that year. A copy was shown to Mrs. Humphry Ward who, considerably impressed, passed it to the publisher Alexander Macmillan. He was immediately keen to publish and it came out in a trade 2-decker in 1881, to a clamorous reception. It struck all the right notes for the times - romantic, sermonising, philosophical and devoid of humour, it delighted a wide audience including Thomas Henry Huxley and Philip Gosse, Cardinal Manning and Gladstone and Charlotte Yonge. The book acquired a cult status, the first novel of a mystic drawn from the Birmingham business-industrial class."--Abebooks website