Mysticism in English Literature is a short critical survey by the English literary scholar Caroline F. E. Spurgeon, first published by Cambridge University Press in 1913 as part of the Cambridge Manuals of Science and Literature series. Spurgeon distinguishes four strands of English literary mysticism — love, nature, philosophy, devotion — and traces them through authors from Richard Rolle and Julian of Norwich to Wordsworth, Blake, Browning, and Francis Thompson.
It was one of the first attempts in English to chart mysticism as a continuous literary tradition rather than as scattered religious episodes. Spurgeon treats mysticism not as occultism but as a philosophical temperament — the intuition that reality is ultimately one — and her survey covers poets and prose writers across five centuries. The book is now read partly as a period document, but it established Spurgeon as a serious scholar before her later Shakespearean studies.
Mysticism is, in truth, a temper rather than a doctrine, an atmosphere rather than a system of philosophy.
Chapter I, Introduction
First lines
Mysticism is a term so irresponsibly applied in English that it has become the first duty of those who use it to explain what they mean by it. The Concise Oxford Dictionary (1911), after defining a mystic as "one who believes in spiritual apprehension of truths beyond the understanding," adds, "whence mysticism (n.) (often contempt)."
Contents
Introduction
Love and Beauty Mystics
Nature Mystics
Philosophical Mystics
Devotional and Religious Mystics
Reception
Spurgeon was the first woman appointed to a university chair in England (in English Literature at Bedford College, London, 1913), and Mysticism in English Literature was the work that established her as a serious critic before her later Shakespearean studies. The book is now read mostly as a period document: its taxonomy is widely seen as too neat (later critics such as Helen Gardner have argued mysticism rarely partitions so cleanly), and its Edwardian register reads as confident where contemporary scholars would qualify. It nonetheless remains in print and is cited in introductory bibliographies on Christian and English literary mysticism, in dialogue with Evelyn Underhill's longer Mysticism, published two years earlier.
Frequently asked
What is Mysticism in English Literature about?
It is a short critical survey by Caroline F. E. Spurgeon that identifies four strands of mysticism in English writing — love and beauty, nature, philosophy, and devotion — and traces them from medieval writers such as Richard Rolle and Julian of Norwich through Romantic and Victorian poets including Wordsworth, Blake, Browning, and Francis Thompson.
How does Spurgeon define mysticism?
Spurgeon restricts herself to philosophical mysticism: the view that reality is ultimately one and that the human spirit can directly apprehend it. She describes it as "a temper rather than a doctrine, an atmosphere rather than a system of philosophy," a disposition shared by thinkers from Plato and Plotinus to the English Romantics.
Which authors does Spurgeon discuss?
The survey is organised in five chapters. The love-and-beauty mystics include Shelley, Rossetti, Browning, Coventry Patmore, and Keats; the nature mystics include Henry Vaughan, Wordsworth, and Richard Jefferies; the philosophical chapter covers Donne, Traherne, Emily Brontë, Tennyson, Coleridge, and Carlyle; and the devotional chapter treats Rolle, Julian of Norwich, Herbert, Blake, and Francis Thompson.