What is The Father Coleridge Reader?

Father Henry James Coleridge SJ was a nineteenth century English Jesuit priest, and forgotten hero.

And The Father Coleridge Reader is your gateway to his amazing, enriching spiritual writings on Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy Gospels, and the life of each Christian today.

Fr Coleridge was related to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the great poet. He entered the Roman Catholic Church from the Church of England (Anglicanism) and became one of the finest writers in English Catholic history.

As well as his many written works, he was the editor of The Month and responsible for The Quarterly Series, a great example of “the apostleship of good books.”

Here’s what was written in his initial obituary in The Month:

The Quarterly Series […] successfully carried on down to the 78th volume of the Series, and of this number a very large proportion were the product of his pen.

Besides such valuable biographies as those of St. Francis Xavier and St. Teresa, the Life of Our Lord in twenty volumes is at once a monument of his patient and loving industry, an exhibition of intense personal devotion to the Sacred Humanity and Divinity of Jesus Christ, and an invaluable treasury of judicious exegesis and practical comment upon His words and works.

This work, had it been his only gift to them, should make Father Coleridge’s memory dear to English Catholics. It has thrown a flood of light on the true principles of the Harmony of the Gospels, on their internal structure, and above all on the providential plan followed in the onward march of the manifestations of Our Lord, in the unfolding of His moral, doctrinal, and ascetical teaching, in the gradual training of His Apostles, and the development of what, with all reverence, may be called His policy in the establishment of His Father’s Kingdom.

By nearly half a century of patient labour, never losing sight of his purpose, though compelled to intermit from time to time the work of actual composition, Father Coleridge succeeded in bringing out elements of [an] intelligent estimate of Our Lord’s Life which do not lie on the surface, but form an illuminating background to the pictures drawn for us by each of the four Evangelists.

When to this really great work of Father Coleridge we add the supplementary volumes which, like so many satellites, attend upon and revolve around it, we find that he has indeed not lived or laboured in vain, but has bequeathed to all English-speaking Catholics a system of teaching concerning Our Lord, the records of His Life, and the theological and devotional contemplation of the Divine plan realized therein, which does not merely contain treasures of devotion and doctrine, but adds indefinitely to their value by his careful and critical arrangement of the time and order of events.

From The Month, Vol. LXXVIII, May 1983, pp 1-3

This is to say nothing for the quiet and exhausting labour he undertook for souls at the Jesuit church at Farm Street, London.

This website exists to promote his memory and legacy, as well as making his works available in audio format for subscribers.

Subscribe now to support this exciting new project, and to ensure that you receive regular extracts from his work going forward:

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The Father Coleridge Reader is a project of The WM Review. As Amazon Associates, we earn from qualifying purchases through our Amazon links. See below for The WM Review’s Father Coleridge Archive:

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Dedicated to the popularisation of Fr Henry James Coleridge, great English Catholic of the modern era, whom Cardinal Gibbons listed alongside Cardinals Wiseman, Manning and Newman, Bishops Hay, Challoner and Milner, Fathers Butler, Lingard and Faber.

People

English Jesuit, 1822-1893; author of The Life of Our Life series and other works; editor of The Month; friend of Cardinal Newman, one of ten great English writers listed by Cardinal Gibbons in 1908 (with Newman, Faber, Challoner, and Alban Butler).
Writing about the Catholic Church.