A Faustian tale ending in uncertain redemption--a candid inquiry into the intertwinings of religious and sexual fervor.
This tale of an ordinary man depicts, on a larger scale, the fall of intellectual America from innocence to knowledge at the end of the nineteenth century. Through his involvement with three women, Theron Ware, a small-town Methodist minister, finds that his abstract, absolute notions about himself and his world lead to doubt and confusion. Uncertain in his faith, Ware is alone and unprepared to meet the moral, scientific, and aesthetic ambiguities of the new century.
Employing the documentary detail, pragmatic attitude, and comic vision of conventional realism, The Damnation of Theron Ware also foreshadows the rise of naturalism - and the works of Theodore Dreiser and Sinclair Lewis. As Scott Donaldson says in his Introduction, "It would be hard to imagine a novel more sensitive to and reflective of the ideas and controversies coursing through the American eighteen-nineties."
With an Introduction by Scott Donaldson
Note on the Text by Stanton Garner
About the Author
Frederic was born in Utica, New York, to Presbyterian parents. After his father was killed in a train accident when Frederic was 18 months old, the boy was raised primarily by his mother. He finished school at fifteen, and soon began work as a photographer. For four years he was a photographic touch-up artist in his hometown and in Boston. In 1875 he began work as a proofreader for the Utica Herald and then the Utica Daily Observer. Frederic later became a reporter, and by 1882 he was editor of the Albany Evening Journal.
Two years later he went to live in England as London correspondent of the New York Times. He retained this job for the rest of his life. He was soon recognized for his ability both as a writer and as a talker. He wrote several early stories, but it was not until he published Illumination (1896), better known by its American title, The Damnation of Theron Ware, followed by Gloria Mundi (1898), that his gifts as a novelist were fully realized. Jonathan Yardley called Damnation "a minor classic of realism".
Frederic married Grace Green Williams in 1877, and they had five children. Sometime between 1889 and 1890, he met Kate Lyon, who became his mistress. Frederic and Lyon established a second household, living openly together; they had three children. Lyon was a Christian Scientist who, when Frederic suffered a stroke in 1898, tried to cure him through faith healing. After his death, she was tried on charges of manslaughter and acquitted. Frederic was interred in Forest Hill Cemetery in Utica, New York. (Wikipedia)
