By the end of the nineteenth century, almost all the great writers, artists, and intellectuals had abandoned Christianity; many had abandoned belief in God altogether. This was in part the result of scientific discovery, particularly the work of Charles Darwin in The Origin of Species and the controversy that followed. But the doubt about religion had many sources. A. N.

Wilson demonstrates in this synthesis of biography and intellectual history that the real destruction of religions belief had been achieved well before Darwin's momentous publication.

Yet despite the fact that the church had essentially become an edifice empty of faith, it survived into our century because so few of the fascinating, tortured people Wilson portrays could face the brutal consequences of their own logic. Whether or not God was dead, they still needed to believe, hence the great spiritual angst of their culture which is now echoed in ours.