Table Of ContentOUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,29/7/2019,SPi
Spiritual Lives
GeneralEditor
TimothyLarsen
OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,29/7/2019,SPi
SPIRITUAL LIVES
GeneralEditor
TimothyLarsen
The Spiritual Lives series features biographies of prominent men and
women whose eminence is not primarily based on a specifically
religious contribution. Each volume provides a general account of
thefigure’slifeandthought,whilegivingspecialattentiontohisorher
religiouscontexts,convictions,doubts,objections,ideas,andactions.
Manyleadingpoliticians,writers,musicians,philosophers,andscien-
tists have engaged deeply with religion in significant and resonant
waysthathaveoftenbeenoverlookedorunderexplored.Someofthe
volumes will even focus on men and women who were lifelong
unbelievers, attending to how they navigated and resisted religious
questions, assumptions, and settings. The books in this series will
therefore recast important figures in fresh and thought-provoking
ways.
Titlesintheseriesinclude:
WoodrowWilson
RulingElder,SpiritualPresident
BarryHankins
ChristinaRossetti
Poetry,Ecology,Faith
EmmaMason
JohnStuartMill
ASecularLife
TimothyLarsen
LeonardWoolf
BloomsburySocialist
FredLeventhalandPeterStansky
OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,29/7/2019,SPi
W. T. Stead
Nonconformist and Newspaper
Prophet
STEWART J. BROWN
1
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3
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To Owen Dudley Edwards
‘Charity never faileth’
OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,29/7/2019,SPi
OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,29/7/2019,SPi
Preface
AtthecrowdedMemorialServiceforW.T.Steadon25April1912in
London’s Westminster Chapel, his close friend of over twenty-five
years, the venerable Baptist Christian Socialist Dr John Clifford––
with long, patriarchal white beard––delivered the main address.
Stead, he said, was the most prominent British editor of the 1880s
and1890s,andhehadtransformedjournalism.Asajournalist,Stead
was ‘brilliant, rapid, unconventional, accomplished...his resources
apparentlyexhaustless,andhisenergywithoutbounds’.Anditwasa
journalisminfusedwithahigherpurpose.‘Hewasajournalist,buta
journalistas PaulwasanApostleandKnoxaReformer,and woeto
him if he did not preach and make potent the good news God gave
him.’ What was most important to Stead was God’s divine plan for
humankind;whatdefinedhimwas hisbeliefthatGoddirectlycalled
him to serve that plan. ‘To me,’ Clifford declared, ‘he was as a
prophet who had come straight out of the Old Testament into our
modern storm-swept life.’ Stead had sought to proclaim God’s will
through journalism to an increasingly secular and materialist world;
for him, the newspaper was ‘a sword to cut down the foes of right-
eousness,aplatformfromwhichtoheartenandinspirethearmiesof
theLord,apulpitfromwhichtopreachhiscrusades,adeskatwhich
he could expound his policy for making a new heaven and a new
earth. He was a man with a mission, and journalism was the organ
throughwhichhewroughtatit.’Aboveallelse,Stead‘wasaprophet
withaprophet’sinsight’anda‘prophet’sfearlessness’.
WilliamThomasStead,newspapereditor,author,socialreformer,
women’srightsadvocate,peacecampaigner,andspiritualist,wasone
of the best-known public figures in late Victorian and Edwardian
Britain. The son of a Congregational minister, Stead emerged to
national prominence in the 1870s, when, as the young editor of the
Darlington Northern Echo, he became a leading voice of the ‘Noncon-
formistConscience’,supportingtheeffortsofProtestantDissentersto
reshapeBritishpoliticsandsocietyaroundChristianmoralstandards.
In 1881, he became assistant editor of London’s evening Pall Mall
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viii Preface
Gazette,andthen,from1883,thenewspaper’seditor.AtthePallMall,
hepioneeredwhatbecameknowninBritainasthe‘NewJournalism’,
withemphasisoninvestigativejournalism,sensationalistnewsstories,
interviewsofprominentfigures,special‘extra’issues,moralcrusades,
bold headlines, and abundant illustrations.In 1885, hegained inter-
nationalprominence,andaprisonsentence,forhishighlycontrover-
sial ‘Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon’ newspaper campaign
directed against the sex trafficking of girls and young women in
London.In1890Stead leftthePallMallandbecamefounder-editor
ofthe successfulLondon-based monthly, The Review of Reviews, which
provided readerswith adigestofarticlesfromtheworld’spress,and
promotedbothglobalperspectivesandtheunityofEnglish-speaking
peoples.In1893,hefoundedandeditedBorderland,aquarterlyjournal
topromotethestudyofpsychicphenomena;hisvolumeofLettersfrom
Julia,firstpublishedinBorderlandanddescribedasmessagesfromthe
afterlife, went through numerous editions and was translated into a
number of languages. Stead became a major voice of the ‘social
gospel’ in Britain and the United States following the publication in
1894 of his best-selling If Christ Came to Chicago! with its call for the
redemptionofthemoderncity.Hewas,moreover,aleadingpropon-
entandpublicist ofthe Hague peace conferencesof1899and 1907,
andthearbitrationofinternationaldisputes.Laudedbymanyforhis
journalistic crusades and Christian social ethics, he was despised by
othersforhissensationalismandself-promotion.
Stead’s remarkable, often highly contentious public career has
generated a rich biographical literature. Two highly sympathetic
memoirs of Stead appeared shortly after his death: My Father (1913)
by his daughter, Estelle, and Stead: The Man (1914) by his assistant,
Edith Harper––both authors placing emphasis on Stead’s spiritual-
ism.Thestandardtwo-volumebiographyofStead,FredericWhyte’s
The Life of W. T. Stead, was published in 1925. A journalist who had
worked under Stead, Whyte wrote a biography which was rich in
insights on both Stead’s journalistic career and the broader cultural
context, although Whyte had little interest in Stead’sNonconformist
roots, religious conceptions, or spiritualist writings. J. W. Robertson
Scott, another journalist who had worked under Stead, provided a
lengthybiographicalstudyofSteadinhisLifeandDeathofaNewspaper
(a study of the Pall Mall Gazette), published in 1952. His account
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Preface ix
drew heavily from Stead’s private journals and offered balanced
assessments of Stead’s achievements and character. In 1972 the
historian Raymond L. Schults produced a thoroughly researched
monograph on Stead’s years at the Pall Mall Gazette, exploring his
contributions to the ‘New Journalism’ and the development of the
modern newspaper. In The Invention of Telepathy of 2002, the cultural
historian, Roger Luckhurst, included a valuable chapter on Stead’s
interestsintelepathiccommunicationsandengagementwithpsychical
researchers.Theliteraryscholar,GraceEckley,publishedanimpres-
sively researched, highly laudatory biography of Stead in 2007. The
centenaryofStead’sdeathin2012broughtarevivalofinterest,witha
lively, engagingbiography of Stead, Muckraker: The Scandalous Lifeand
TimesofW.T.Stead,bythejournalist,W.SydneyRobinson;asthetitle
suggests, Robinson emphasized Stead’s sensationalist journalistic
campaignsandallegedsexualliaisons.2012alsosawaninternational
conferenceattheBritishLibraryinLondon,whichledtoavolumeof
essays,W.T.Stead:NewspaperRevolutionary,editedbyLaurelBrake,Ed
King, Roger Luckhurst, and James Mussell. The essays mainly
exploredStead’sjournalism,withsomecontributionsonhisspiritual-
ism.ThemostimportantmodernscholarofSteadwasthehistorian,
JosephBaylen,whoexploredStead’svariedcareerinaseriesofwell-
researched,insightful,andauthoritativearticles.Ihadtheopportunity
tomeetProfessorBaylenwhenhewasnearingretirementatGeorgia
StateUniversityandIwasteachingattheUniversityofGeorgia,and
Irememberwellhisgraciousmannerandwarmencouragementtoa
youngerscholar.Hedidnot,unfortunately, managetocompletethe
definitivebiographyofSteadforwhichwehadhoped.
ThisbookisareligiousbiographyofStead.Whatinterestsmeasan
historianofmodernChristianityishowforStead,andformanyofhis
readers, the late nineteenth-century newspaper took on certain roles
previously filled by the church, proclaiming a high social ethics,
exposing and denouncing sin, seeking to discern the direction of the
history and destiny of humankind, and forming participatory net-
works of readers for moral action. My biography gives particular
attention to Stead’s conception of journalism, at a time of growing
massliteracy,asameanstocommunicateasocialgospel,andhisview
of the editor’s desk as a modern pulpit, from which the editor/
preachercould reach acongregation oftens ofthousands. The book
