The Christian Year is a series of poems for all the Sundays and some other feasts of the

liturgical year The liturgical year, also called the church year, Christian year, ecclesiastical calendar, or kalendar, consists of the cycle of liturgical days and seasons that determines when feast days, including celebrations of saints, are to be obse ...

of the

Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the State religion#State churches, established List of Christian denominations, Christian church in England and the Crown Dependencies. It is the mother church of the Anglicanism, Anglican Christian tradition, ...

written by John Keble in 1827. The book is the source for several

hymn A hymn is a type of song, and partially synonymous with devotional song, specifically written for the purpose of adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity or deities, or to a prominent figure or personification. The word ''hymn'' d ...

s. It was first published in 1827, and quickly became extremely popular. Though at first anonymous, its authorship soon became known, with the result that Keble was in 1831 appointed Oxford Professor of Poetry, a post that he held until 1841. In his book ''Heaven, Hell, and the Victorians'', Victorian scholar Michael Wheeler calls ''The Christian Year'' simply "the most popular volume of verse in the nineteenth century".Michael Wheeler, ''Heaven, Hell, and the Victorians'' (Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 60. In his essay on " Tractarian Aesthetics and the Romantic Tradition," Gregory Goodwin claims that ''The Christian Year'' is "Keble's greatest contribution to the

Oxford Movement The Oxford Movement was a theological movement of high-church members of the Church of England which began in the 1830s and eventually developed into Anglo-Catholicism. The movement, whose original devotees were mostly associated with the Un ...

and to

English literature English literature is literature written in the English language from the English-speaking world. The English language has developed over more than 1,400 years. The earliest forms of English, a set of Anglo-Frisian languages, Anglo-Frisian d ...

." As evidence of that, Goodwin cites E. B. Pusey's report that ninety-five editions of this devotional text were printed during Keble's lifetime, and "at the end of the year following his death, the number had arisen to a hundred-and-nine." By the time the copyright expired in 1873, over 375,000 copies had been sold in Britain and 158 editions had been published. Despite its widespread appeal among the Victorian readers, the popularity of Keble's ''The Christian Year'' quickly faded in the twentieth century.

References

External links

Full text of ''The Christian Year''
at

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Christian Year
at Christian Classics Ethereal Library {{DEFAULTSORT:Christian Year, The English Christian hymns Christian devotional literature 1827 poems 19th-century Christian texts 1827 poetry books Books about Christianity Books about spirituality Christian festivals and holy days Liturgical calendar Anglican liturgical books