Lord of the World (Dover Doomsday Classics) - Softcover

Benson, Robert Hugh

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0486803813 ISBN 13: 9780486803814

Publisher: Dover Publications, 2015

Synopsis

Belief in God has been replaced by secular humanism in this gripping tale of the apocalypse. Protestantism is over, Catholicism is driven underground, and the Eastern religions have merged into a single pantheistic creed that poses an ongoing military threat to the West. Without a spiritual dimension to their lives, people are literally bored to death, choosing legal euthanasia rather than an empty existence. A charismatic leader arises amid this culture of despair, and in their eagerness for change, the citizens support the coming of the Antichrist and the end of days.
One of the first works of modern dystopic fiction, this 1907 novel is remarkably prescient in its depiction of a technologically advanced society that rushes headlong toward its own destruction. Author Robert Hugh Benson, son of the Archbishop of Canterbury and a convert to Roman Catholicism, wrote this dark parable in response to the science-fiction novels of H. G. Wells, which portrayed utopian societies in terms of atheism and one-world government. The novel has been hailed as prophetic by Dale Ahlquist, Joseph Pearce, Pope Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis, among others.

About this title

Book Description:

Can a timeless book become timely 100 years after its first appearance?
     In this profound and prescient novel, Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson gives us an imaginative foretelling of the end of the world. All stories, Aristotle said, have a beginning, a middle, and an end, but most ends are relative, the terminus of this chain of acts or that. But what of the end that terminates all human action as we know it, the end of time itself, the Second Coming? Since this novel appeared in 1906, many others have been devoted to nuclear disaster, destructive comets, and other hair-raising possibilities. What sets Benson’s story apart and makes it as readable today as when it was written is the Catholic and biblical context that provides the ultimate meaning.
     Robert Hugh Benson (1871–1914) was the son of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and his conversion to Catholicism caused a stir. He became a great apologist for the faith, in spiritual works as well as in works of the imagination. Lord of the World is first of all a tremendous “read,” but it is also spiritual food for thought.
     The late Ralph McInerny contributed a fine preface to the work, and recently Fr. C. John McCloskey III, a specialist on the work of Robert Hugh Benson, added a fascinating introduction.
 

From the Publisher:

LORD OF THE WORLD is a bitingly satiric science fiction novel of a secularized world state. As Rosa Mulholland, Lady Gilbert, declared, "It is a brilliant, beautiful, and terrible book," a judgment in which the public has fully concurred for nearly a century. LORD OF THE WORLD is the only one of Benson’s novels to remain continually in print from its first publication in 1907 down to the present day. Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen declared, "The three great apocalyptic pieces of literature dealing with the advent of the satanic are Father Hugh Benson’s LORD OF THE WORLD, Dostoyevsky’s THE BROTHERS KARAMOZOV, and Soloviev’s THREE CONVERSATIONS ON WAR."

About this edition

• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0486803813
• ISBN 13: 9780486803814
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400