The Damnation Of Theron Ware

This Faustian tale of the spiritual disintegration of a young minister, written in the 1890s, deals subtly and powerfully with the impact of science on innocence and the collective despair that marked the transition into the modern age. In its realism, "The Damnation of Theron Ware" foreshadows Howells; in its conscious imagery it prefigures Norris, Crane, Henry James, and the "symbolic realism" of the twentieth century. Its author, Harold Frederic, internationally famous as London correspondent for the "New York Times," wrote the novel two years before his death.

First published in 1896, this unsung masterpiece of American literature details the rise and fall of a Methodist minister in upstate New York. Part of Belt's Revivals series and with a new introduction by Ruth Graham. Th

The central figure in Harold Frederic's novel is a Methodist minister, self-educated, untutored in the ways of the world, and intensely earnest. He is brought into intimate association with a woman who is in every way his spiritual and intellectual antithesis — a Roman Catholic, brilliant, beautiful, and self-indulgent, who seeks a new sensation in tempting the raw country preacher who has yet to learn the perils of a prolonged flirtation. The scene, like that of most of Mr. Frederic's books, is laid in a small country town, and he once more draws to the life the crudities and curiosities of American provincial life.

This Faustian tale of the spiritual disintegration of a young minister, written in the 1890s, deals subtly and powerfully with the impact of science on innocence and the collective despair that marked the transition into the modern age. In its realism, "The Damnation of Theron Ware" foreshadows Howells; in its conscious imagery it prefigures Norris, Crane, Henry James, and the "symbolic realism" of the twentieth century. Its author, Harold Frederic, internationally famous as London correspondent for the "New York Times," wrote the novel two years before his death.

"A young pastor plunges into a moral decline after encounters with a priest, an atheist, and an aesthete. This classic of 19th century American realism offers a revelatory look at small-town life and an innocent's seduction by strange new ideas. Gripping storytelling and keen characterizations recapture the era's religious, scientific, philosophical, and sexual anxieties"--

Reproduction of the original.