An illuminating study looking at an influential group of Roman Catholic novelists and writers - Chesterton, Belloc, Waugh, Greene, Spark and David Lodge among others.

Students and Scholars at all levels of English Literature, of the place of Catholicism in English society and any intelligent reader interested in the relationship between religion and literature.

Richard Griffiths was Chair of French at University College Cardiff and at King's College, University of London, UK.

Preface \ Section One: Introductory - 1. Clearing the Decks: An approach to English 'Catholic' literature \ 2. The Background to the Catholic Revival: Catholicism and British Society in the 19th and early 20th centuries \ Section Two: The Beginnings - 3. The preparatory ground, 1840-1890 \ 4. A solitary genius: Gerard Manley Hopkins \ 5. The Generation of the Nineties \ Section Three: The Catholic Novel before Greene and Waugh (1899-1938) - 6. The novel of contemporary life \ 7. Four popular narrative genres \ 8. Techniques and themes in the novel \ Section Four: Some Religious and Political Attitudes in the period up to 1940 - 9. Authority, and Heresy \ 10. Political Catholicism \ Section Five: Three Literary Giants - 11. Graham Greene \ 12. Evelyn Waugh. \ 13. David Jones \ Section Six: Catholic Writers of the late Twentieth Century - 14. Poets \ 15. Novelists \ Conclusion \ Bibliography