Books by Basil Willey

Originally published in 1946, this volume contains the text of an inaugural lecture delivered by Basil Willey on his accession to the King Edward VII Professorship of English Literature in the University of Cambridge. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in Arthur Quiller-Couch, known to his friends as 'Q'.

This important and influential inquiry into the history of religious and moral ideas in the nineteenth century has become (since its first appearance in 1949) a seminal study for all students of English literature and the history of ideas. In it, the author examines a shifting succession of beliefs.