By the time of Catholic emancipation in England in 1829, the new spirit of Romanticism had given birth to manifestations of neo-medievalism, including the Gothic Revival in architecture, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in art, and the Oxford Movement within the Church of England. This heralded the beginning of a phenomenal Catholic revival beginning in England and then spreading throughout the English-speaking world.
Although there were many factors influencing this revival, including the spread of the Irish Catholic diaspora following the famine of the 1840s, there is no doubt that the reception of John Henry Newman into the Church in 1845 was a defining moment in the Catholic cultural and literary revival that followed. If, however, Newman’s giant presence presided over the revival in the nineteenth century, the continuation of the revival in the twentieth century was led by two literary giants, G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, both of whom were hugely influential in the growth of the Catholic presence in the wider culture. Although much could and should be said about Chesterton, we will focus on Belloc.
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