Cover courtesy of Oxford University Press

William Empson

Volume II: Against the Christians

Volume 2 of 2

Publication

Notes: The second volume of Haffenden's life of the critic and poet William Empson, covering the years in which Empson's hostility to Christianity -- and above all to the doctrine of the atonement, which he thought made God a torturer -- became the organising argument of his criticism. An unusual book for this collection: it is here as a serious account of a first-rate mind arguing against the faith the rest of the shelf assumes. Volume I is Among the Mandarins (2005). No contents list is recorded; it awaits a photograph.