Sydneysiders will have the opportunity to meet celebrated Catholic author and speaker Joseph Pearce when he makes his first visit to Australia next month.
The UK-born professor of literature has published more than 30 books on history and literature from a Catholic perspective—including his most recent, Classic Literature Made Simple: Fifty great books in a nutshell.
Pearce entered the church aged 28 and wrote a memoir Race with the Devil about his conversion from being a rage-fuelled white supremacist to Catholicism while in prison.
He has written extensively about literary greats such as Shakespeare, JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, GK Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc and Oscar Wilde.
Speaking of topics of concern to Christians and Catholics, Pearce said he will seek to draw out the “good, true and the beautiful as a way of showing the way, the truth and the life, who is Jesus Christ.”
His speaking tour of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane will be hosted by Hartford College, a Year 5-12 boys’ school in Sydney’s Daceyville with an emphasis on the liberal arts tradition of education.
Chair of Hartford College Tim Mitchell said Pearce will draw deeply from his “incredible knowledge” of the Western literary canon.
“He has been described as the master chronicler of the Catholic literary revival, so I think people will go away with the sense that good literature helps us understand ourselves and it helps us understand our creator,” Mitchell added.
Pearce is Visiting Professor of Literature at Ave Maria University in Florida, Visiting Chair of Catholic Studies at Thomas More College of Liberal Arts in New Hampshire, and editor of the St Austin Review journal of Catholic culture and literature.
His eight-day tour begins in Sydney on 5 May at Campion College, Toongabbie, where he will speak on the topic of “God’s love and great literature.” On 6 May at Warrane College, Kensington, he will discuss lessons for today from Solzhenitsyn’s life and writings.
On 9 May Pearce will discuss his personal faith story at St Michael the Archangel church, Belfield, and on 10 May at Hartford College he will speak on the battle for “a true education.”
Full tour schedule is at hartfordcollege.nsw.edu.au