The Education of Phillips
Brooks probes the formative years of one of the best-known figures
of Victorian America's "Gilded Age." Rigorously researched,
bringing as yet untapped archival material into play, John F. Woolverton's
book is an extremely readable and fascinating look at a gifted, persuasive
clergyman and public figure. One of the most influential ministers of
his time, Brooks delivered the sermon over the body of Abraham Lincoln
at Independence Hall in Philadelphia and is known for penning the lyrics
to "O Little Town of Bethlehem."
Although Brooks was not a
major theologian, he was nurtured in an atmosphere of serious religious
thought. In the crisis era of pre-Civil War America, he sought a religious
and cultural ideal in the perfect manhood of Jesus Christ and consequently
"won a name" for himself, as his slightly envious cousin, Henry
Adams, once remarked. Woolverton places Brooks in his cultural context
and shows how this religious leader was shaped psychologically and by
his times and how those factors helped him forge a spiritual ideal for
a troubled nation.
"Not only casts new light
on the young manhood of one of the preeminent Anglican ministers in America,
but enhances our understanding of key cultural trends in the mid-nineteenth
century." -- Anne C. Rose, author of Victorian America and the
Civil War
- ISBN10 025202186X
- ISBN13 9780252021862
- Publish Date 1 September 1995
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Imprint University of Illinois Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 168
- Language English