author

Henry Waller

Best known today for a single surviving work, he wrote in the middle of a sharp 19th-century religious debate. His book takes the form of a lively exchange of letters, making theological argument feel unexpectedly direct and personal.

1 Audiobook

The Jesuits A correspondence relative to a lecture so entitled, recently delivered before the Islington Protestant Institute by the Rev. Edward Hoare, M.A., incumbent of Christ Church, Ramsgate

The Jesuits A correspondence relative to a lecture so entitled, recently delivered before the Islington Protestant Institute by the Rev. Edward Hoare, M.A., incumbent of Christ Church, Ramsgate

by Henry Waller, Edward Hoare

About the author

Henry Waller is a little-documented 19th-century author whose name is chiefly preserved through The Jesuits. Project Gutenberg lists that work under his name, and describes it as a correspondence with Rev. Edward Hoare about a lecture on the Jesuit order, based on an 1852 edition.

What makes Waller interesting is the form of the book as much as the subject. Rather than a detached treatise, it unfolds as a back-and-forth argument over doctrine, morality, and authority, giving readers a window into the religious controversies of Victorian Britain.

Because reliable biographical information about him is scarce in the sources I could confirm, it is safest to remember him through that surviving work: a focused, combative, and very human piece of religious controversy writing.