The Damnation of Theron Ware

A young Methodist minister in a small upstate New York town believes himself cultured and destined for greater things. Then three people enter his narrow world: a Catholic priest of easy learning, a scientist who treats religion as a curiosity, and a red-haired Irish woman whose beauty and music unsettle him. As Theron Ware absorbs their ideas, his simple faith and his high opinion of himself begin to rot from within, and what he mistakes for enlightenment turns into a slow moral collapse. Harold Frederic wrote one of the sharpest American novels of the 1890s, a study of intellectual vanity and self-deception told with irony and a good deal of quiet sympathy. This free PDF and EPUB edition makes the classic available again.