Literature

Methodism (or the Evangelical Revival as a whole) has been seen (e.g. by F.C. Gill and T.B. Shepherd) as a precursor of the Romantic Movement. Both were a reaction against the more formal Augustan age that preceded them. Of the considerable volume of literature produced by eighteenth century Methodism, little would be generally acclaimed as of lasting literary value. Nevertheless, John Wesley was a master of unadorned prose (not least in his voluminous correspondence), which contrasts sharply with the ponderous Johnsonese style of his day. He contributed to popular literacy through a pocket dictionary and a simple English grammar and was a pioneer anthologist, e.g. in his Collection of Moral and Sacred Poems (1744). Both he and his brother Charles were well read in the English poets, notably Milton, Herbert, Prior and Edward Young. But for appreciation of the literary qualities of his own verse Charles Wesley had to wait two centuries for a George Sampson (in 'The Century of Divine Songs', Warton Lecture, 1943) and a Donald Davie. Robert Southey wrote one of the earliest lives of John Wesley (1820) and in 1928 Evelyn Waugh was working on another, but this came to nothing apart from satirical references in Vile Bodies (1930).

Despite early misgivings about novel-reading and a lack of major literary figures in its own ranks, Methodism was a significant element in the family background of the Brontës, George Eliot, Arnold Bennett, Rudyard Kipling and Arthur Quiller-Couch. It produced a number of minor novelists (such as 'John Ackworth' (F.R. Smith), Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler, Mark Guy Pearse, the Hocking brothers, 'Hesba Stretton', 'Ramsay Guthrie' (J.G. Bowran), Michael Maurice (Skinner, Conrad), Amelia Barr in America and William Riley); and more recently the Booker Prize-winning Stanley Middleton and Joseph L. Carr, best known for his A Month in the Country (1980). Writers popular at least with fellow-Methodist readers include H.L. Gee, W.J. May and Winship Storey. The novels of the Midlands author Francis Brett Green contain many dismissive references to Methodist characters.

Howard Spring and James Hilton went to Methodist schools, 'G.B.S.' attended Wesley College, Dublin and Emlyn Williams attended a Methodist Sunday School. Among other writers who abandoned or drifted away from their Methodist roots are the Cornish poet Jack Clemo and the novelist L.P. Hartley. The author Sidney Chaplin was a local preacher from 1938 to 1948. According to Benjamin Gregory, Andrew Lang 'acknowledged gratefully his indebtedness to his Methodist home training and to the earnest ministrations at Waltham Street, Hull'.

Methodism was more prolific of writers of dialect verse (e.g. Thomas Wilson, John Castillo, Oliver Ormerod and Edwin Waugh), popular in the nineteenth century, especially in the north. More serious poets have included John Wesley Thomas and Emma Tatham in the nineteenth century, and in the twentieth, John Freeman, Norman Nicholson and Fred Pratt Green. G.H. Vallins was a skilful parodist. Country writers and broadcasters include Ralph Whitlock and Crichton Porteus. The twentieth century also produced Edward J. Thompson, a literary scholar of the calibre of Professor Basil Willey, a literary journalist like Gilbert Thomas and the children's writer Lucy M. Boston (née Wood). Hugh Sykes Davies (1909-1984), poet, novelist and fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge where he lectured on English literature, was the son of the Rev. Thomas Seaton Davies (1869-1941; e.m. 1894) and was educated at Kingswood School, though later more influenced by Communism than by Methodism. Arthur Quiller Couch (1863-1944) was descended on his mother's side from a staunch Methodist family, the Couch's of Polperro. One of his novels was a life of Hetty Wesley (1903).

Irish and, even more, Welsh Methodists have made a notable contribution to their national literature both in the vernacular and in English.

The Irish dramatist Samuel Beckett came from a strong Methodist background of Dublin architects. The poet Kathleen Raine (1908-2003) may represent others whose Methodist roots did not prevent them from moving away from their inherited loyalties in adult life. The daughter of a Methodist schoolmaster and local preacher, with a Methodist grandfather and a Calvinistic mother, in her autobiography she declared her inheritance to be 'an irreconcilable conflict of values'.

Quotations

'Charles Wesley's hymns were known to millions by the end of the century. Not merely was he one of the best-known poets of his day, he was also one of the best. Familiarity with such carols as Hark the Herald Angels Sing or Let Earth and Heaven Combine can easily blur our appreciation of a poetic subtlety and compression that lifts him far above most of his contemporaries, and puts him, at his best, in the same class as Herbert or Newman - both of whom had a much smaller range.'

Stephen Prickett in The Context of English Literature: The Romantics (1981) p.127

Sources
  • S.W. Christophers, The Poets of Methodism (1875)
  • J. Albert Swallow, Methodism in the light of the English Literature of the last century (1895)
  • F.C. Gill, The Romantic Movement and Methodism (1937)
  • T.B. Shepherd, Methodism and the Literature of the Eighteenth Century (1940)
  • Donald Davie, A Gathered Church: the literature of the English Dissenting interest, 1700-1930 (1978)
  • James E. McConnell, 'The character of Methodism in George Eliot's Adam Bede', in Methodist History, vol.45:4 (2007, pp.244-53
  • Helen Boyles, Romanticism and Methodism: the Problem of Religious Enthusiasm (2017)
  • David Dickinson, Yet Alive? Methodists in British Fiction since 1890 (Newcastle upon Tyne, 2016)
  • "WHS Proceedings", vol. 62, pp. 208-23.