None Other Gods (Benson)
By Robert Hugh Benson
None Other Gods tells of one Frank Guiseley, a young man who abruptly departs his Cambridge education to “take to the roads” of England. Even as the novelty of his wandering ways wears off, Frank finds life imbued with a new and mysterious sense of purpose and peace brought about by his renouncing the world and its riches. Having converted to Catholicism while at Cambridge, Frank goes through the transformative changes of grace—what Benson calls in the novel’s Dedication, “purgation, illumination, and union.”
None Other Gods properly belongs with such works as Chesterton’s Manalive, as Benson depicts a life that contradicts all conventionalities and ends with the ultimate sacrifice of love.
“Here, in what is supposed by the world to be the narrow constraint of religion, was a liberty and an outlook into realities such as the open road and nature can but seldom give.”
Robert Hugh Benson (1871–1914) the son of the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, was a convert to Roman Catholicism and was ordained a priest in 1904. A dynamic preacher and author, Benson wrote dozens of novels as well as numerous short stories, plays, essays, and spiritual texts.
Paperback: 354pp.
ISBN: 978-1944418656
