Crux Ansata
First edition cover
AuthorH. G. Wells
PublisherPenguin Books
Publication date
1943

Crux Ansata, subtitled 'An Indictment of the Roman Catholic Church' (1943) is one of the last books published by H. G. Wells (1866–1946). It is a scathing, 96-page critique of the Roman Catholic Church.

Publication

Crux Ansata was published in 1943, during the Second World War, by Penguin Books, Harmondsworth (Great Britain): Penguin Special No. 129.[1] The U.S. edition was copyrighted and published in 1944 by Agora Publishing Company, New York, with a portrait frontispiece and an appendix of an interview with Wells recorded by John Rowland.[2] The U.S. edition of 144 pages went into a third printing in August 1946.[3]

Contents

Wells, then living in London under the regular German Luftwaffe bombings from across the English Channel, extensively attacks Pope Pius XII and calls for the bombing of the city of Rome. The book also forms a hostile history of the Roman Catholic Church, deeply imbued with anti-clericalism. Wells, by then an atheist, had a long history of anti-Catholic writings spanning decades.[4][5]

References

  1. ^ H. G. Wells a comprehensive bibliography. Great Britain: H. G. Wells Society. 1972. p. 44. ISBN 0-902291-65-3.
  2. ^ Wells, H. G. Crux Ansata, an indictment of the Roman Catholic Church. New York: Agora Publishing. p. 140.
  3. ^ Wells, H. G. (1946). Crux Ansata, an indictment of the Roman Catholic Church. New York: Agora Publishing. pp. ii–iv.
  4. ^ "The Anti-Catholicism of H. G. Wells".
  5. ^ Schweitzer, Darrell. "Darrell Schweitzer: The H.G. Wells Problem". New York Review of Science Fiction. NYRSF. Retrieved 27 January 2021. Incidentally, Wells was also intensely anti-Catholic.... This climaxed in a 1943 screed called 'Crux Ansata: An Indictment of the Catholic Church,' that Penguin rather inexplicably published as a mass market paperback....

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