author
Robert Alfred Vaughan
1823–1857
A gifted Victorian writer and Congregational minister, he is best remembered for Hours with the Mystics, a thoughtful and wide-ranging study of religious experience. His life was brief, but his writing left a lasting impression for its intelligence, warmth, and spiritual curiosity.
1 Audiobook
Hours with the Mystics: A Contribution to the History of Religious Opinion
by Robert Alfred Vaughan
About the author
Born in Worcester in 1823, Robert Alfred Vaughan was the eldest son of the historian and minister Robert Vaughan. He studied at University College School and the University of London, graduating young with classical honors, and later continued theological study at the Lancashire Independent College and in Halle.
Vaughan served as a Congregational minister in Bath and Birmingham, while also building a reputation as a writer. His best-known book, Hours with the Mystics, explored the history of mystical thought and helped secure his place among notable nineteenth-century religious authors.
His health was fragile from early life, and he died in London in 1857 at only thirty-four. Even so, he was remembered as a serious, graceful writer whose work joined learning with a deeply human interest in faith and ideas.