Agnes Moreville : S Sheridan Wilson 1845 [ Anti-Catholic Novel ]
$450
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A well-preserved copy of the strange and scathingly anti-Catholic novel, Agnes Moreville, written by the author and missionary Rev Samuel Sheridan Wilson.
Wilson, Rev. S Sheridan. Agnes Moreville : Or The Victim of the Convent Pointing Out The Imminent Peril Of Monastic Education. Seeley, Burnside, And Seeley. Fleet Street, London. 1845. Second Edition.
“When the pious and manly mind of Lord Moreville was strangely outwitted by the base arts of jesuitism , when this well – informed British noble unadvisedly placed in the very jaws of the wolf his amiable and promising child… little did he augur the fatal result.” — pg 219
A well-preserved copy of the strange and scathingly anti-Catholic novel, Agnes Moreville, written by the author and missionary Rev Samuel Sheridan Wilson.
A cautionary tale mostly made up of long sermon-like dialogues interspersed with poetical fables, the plot centers on the noble Moreville family. In the wake of his wife’s death, devout protestant Lord Moreville travels across Europe, entrusting the care of his younger daughter, Agnes, to a Maison d’Education connected to an Ursuline Convent and Jesuit Seminary in Paris for a term of three years. A front for an explicit Jesuit conspiracy to convert well-connected British young people to Catholicism to expand the temporal power of the pope, Agnes’ announcement that she is a Catholic destroys her father’s health, ultimately leading to his death from a broken heart. Although tempted by marriage with a Catholic noble and then joining a convent, Agnes eventually returns to England and the protestant fold, though she remains sympathetic and curious about Catholicism for the rest of her days. The moral of the story, supplied by the author in all capitals, is ” NEVER EXPOSE A YOUNG , WARM AND DOCILE MIND TO THE TAINTED ATMOSPHERE OF A PAPAL SEMINARY.”
A fascinating window into the period of its creation, Wilson’s repeated references to the “Peace of 1814” firmly place the narrative within the period of relative calm following the Napoleonic wars which Wilson frames as having lured the English into a false sense of security toward the “Roman Antichrist”. In addition to a chapter supporting the rise of the Young Italy movement as an opposition to Vatican political power in pre-unification Italy, the text is filled with references to then-current events in religion and politics, including the attempted secularization of French Jesuits in 1845, as well as the publication of Iniquities and Barbarities Practised at Rome by Raffaele Ciocci the same year. Apart from the Jesuits, Wilson takes repeated aim at the contemporary Oxford Movement and one of its major leaders, Dr Edward Pusey, whose “appalling heresies” of Anglo-Catholicism help threaten the Church of England and English protestant independence.
Wilson, primarily a missionary in the Mediterranean, is also known for his works The Bath Fables On Morals, Manners and Faith (1850) and A Narrative of the Greek Mission from Cypria (1839), and makes repeated references to protestant missionary tracts being spread in Italy as well as the conventions of preaching in Greek, in his extensive, almost academic, footnotes throughout the novel.
8 copies of any edition found in OCLC. Copies held at Oxford, Cambridge, The British Library, and the National Libraries of Australia and Scotland. The only listed American copy held by the University of Chicago’s Special Collections.
[438]pp. Publishers blind stamped brown cloth with title and author gilt to spine. Corners bumped and worn. Wear with rubbing to edges and with cloth losses at spine ends. Some bruising to faces, small stain back lower fore corner. Textblock darkened. Pages toned but clean. Margin tears to pgs. 394, 401, and 407. Page 438 misprinted as 348. Hand colored frontispiece. Good condition.
If you liked this book, you might also enjoy this scarce English edition of the religious works of the “Satanic” priest, the Abbe Boullan
