INGE, WILLIAM RALPH

Anglican clergyman and author; b. Crayke, Yorkshire, England, June 6, 1860; d. Wallingford, Berkshire, England, Feb. 26, 1954. Educated at Eton and King's College, Cambridge, he became assistant master at Eton (1884), fellow at King's College (1886), fellow and tutor at Hertford College, Oxford (1889), vicar of All Saints', Knights-bridge (1905), and Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge (1907). When he was dean of St. Paul's, London (1911–34), his criticisms of the spirit of secular optimism earned him the sobriquet "The Gloomy Dean." He was named knight commander of the Victorian Order in 1930.

Inge's advocacy of Christian platonism, with its tradition of "mysticism based on a foundation of reason," found expression in many widely read works, among them Christian Mysticism (1899), Faith and Knowledge (1905), Personal Idealism and Mysticism (1907), Studies of English Mystics (1906), Faith and Its Psychology (1919), The Philosophy of Plotinus (1918), and The Platonic Tradition in English Religious Thought (1926).

His critical treatments of contemporary thought include major works such as God and the Astronomers (1933). Two series of Outspoken Essays (1919, 1922) deal with a variety of subjects. Christian Ethics and Modern Problems (1930) is an examination of 20th-century personal and social morality. Inge's provocative views and brilliance of style made him one of the outstanding clerical and literary figures of his day.

Bibliography: a. fox, Dean Inge (London 1960). r. m. helm, The Gloomy Dean: The Thought of William Ralph Inge (Winston-Salem, NC 1962).

[r. m. helm]