Harold Frederic 
Damnation of Theron Ware (Barnes & Noble Digital Library) 

This edition includes a modern introduction and a list of suggested further reading.


 


One of the most riveting examples of American literary realism,
The Damnation of Theron Ware insightfully captures the unsettling religious, scientific, philosophical, and sexual transitions American society underwent in the late nineteenth century. Theron Ware, a naïve Methodist minister, becomes sexually attracted to Celia Madden, daughter of the town’s richest resident, and is intellectually seduced by her friends, including the town’s Catholic priest and a reclusive scientist. Intoxicated by the strange ideas of his new friends, Theron Ware eagerly trades in his former innocence and faith for a conspicuously ‘modern’ set of ideas and beliefs he only vaguely understands. What first appears to be illumination is ultimately ‘damnation’ for Ware, as he abandons all beliefs for a shallow pursuit of power and financial success.

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Harold Frederic was born in 1856 in Utica, New York. His birth five years before the Civil War began placed him in the position to observe the passing away of the antebellum generation as the twentieth century drew closer, which to Frederic came to symbolize the loss of a national innocence and a traditional set of values and beliefs. He worked as a newspaper reporter until the success of
The Damnation of Theron Ware provided him the financial security to quit.