Imagination

This essay by Coventry Patmore (1823-1896), one of the great English poets and writers of the Catholic literary revival in the late nineteenth century, explores the importance of the faculty of the imagination in human formation. For a time Patmore worked in the British Museum but, happily, his marriage to a woman of considerable means enabled him to cultivate a life of writing and scholarship. He was among the best friends of Browning, Tennyson, Ruskin and Alice Meynell, who was herself a key figure in the Catholic revival in literature. After entering the Catholic Church in 1864, his poetry became marked by a deep spirituality. So deep and consistent were his reflections on marriage that Patmore was dubbed “the laureate of wedded love”. [For more of these Catholic essays, see the Table of Contents.]

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