author
Henry Giles
1809–1882
An Irish-born preacher and essayist, he built a reputation on both sides of the Atlantic for lively lectures and thoughtful literary criticism. His work ranges from religion and culture to Shakespeare and Irish subjects, giving readers a vivid sense of 19th-century intellectual life.
1 Audiobook
Unitarianism Defended A Series of Lectures by Three Protestant Dissenting Ministers of Liverpool
by John Hamilton Thom, Henry Giles, James Martineau
About the author
Born in County Wexford in 1809, he was raised in a Roman Catholic family and later moved through several religious commitments before becoming a Unitarian minister. He studied for a time at the Royal Academical Institution in Belfast, then served in Greenock, Scotland, and at Toxteth Park in Liverpool before emigrating to the United States in 1840.
In America, he became especially well known as a lecturer as well as a writer. His published works include Lectures and Essays, Christian Thought on Life, Illustrations of Genius, Human Life in Shakespeare, and Lectures and Essays on Irish and Other Subjects. Across these books, he wrote in an accessible way about literature, religion, culture, and public life.
He died near Boston in 1882. Although not as widely read now as some of his contemporaries, he was admired in his own time for bringing moral seriousness and literary enthusiasm together in a style meant for general readers as much as for scholars.