2 Ann Loades, ‘Evelyn Underhill (1875–1941): Mysticism and Worship’, International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 10.1 (2010), pp. 57-70 (58).

3 Dana Greene, Evelyn Underhill: Artist of the Infinite Life (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1991), p. 111; Christopher J.R. Armstrong, Evelyn Underhill (London: Mowbrays, 1975), pp. 261-63.

4 Bernard McGinn, The Foundations of Mysticism (New York: Crossroad, 1991), pp. 273–74.

5 These include The Mystic Way (London: J.M. Dent, 1913); and Practical Mysticism (London: J.M. Dent, 1914). She also produced important editions of medieval mystics including The Cloud of Unknowing (London: J.M. Watkins, 1912); and biographies of mystics including Ruysbroeck (London: G. Bell, 1915) and Jacopone da Todi (London: J.M. Dent, 1919). For a full list of her publications see ‘Bibliography of Works by and About Evelyn Underhill’, in Dana Greene (ed.), Evelyn Underhill: Modern Guide to the Ancient Quest for the Holy (New York: State University of New York Press, 1988), pp. 219-56.

6 Michael Ramsey, ‘Foreword’, in Armstrong, Underhill, p. x.

7 Dana Greene, Evelyn Underhill, p. 6.

8 Jeffrey Kripal, Eroticism and Reflexivity in the Study of Mysticism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), p. 81.

9 This phrase is used broadly to refer to what Stephen Spencer describes as an ethically defined Christian Socialism that stresses cooperation but also is defined by ‘fellowship’, ‘a duty of service’ and ‘sacrifice’.

The most visible proponents of this view were F.D. Maurice, Charles Gore, Scott Holland and especially William Temple. See Stephen Spencer, Theology Reforming Society (London: SCM Press, 2017), pp. 85-89. See also Bruce Wollenberg, Christian Social Thought in Great Britain Between the Wars (Lanham, MD: University of America Press, 1997), pp. 1-10; John Oliver, The Church and Social Order: Social Thought in the Church of England 1918–1939 (London: A.R. Mowbray, 1968); Alan Wilkinson, Christian Socialism: Scott Holland to Tony Blair (London: SCM Press, 1998); Malcolm Brown (ed.), Anglican Social Theology Today (London: Church House Publishing, 2014).

10 Margaret Cropper, Evelyn Underhill (London: Longmans, 1958), p. 136.

11 Evelyn Underhill, The Spiritual Life (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1937), p. 138.

12 Michael Ramsey, ‘Evelyn Underhill’, Religious Studies 12.3 (1976), pp. 273-79 (277).

13 Underhill was awarded a Fellowship to the women’s college of King’s College London in 1913, see The London Times, 20 March 1913, p. 9.

14 Underhill was always an ecumenist, as were many Christians involved in the Christian Social movement. She worked closely with Lucy Gardner, a Quaker, while retaining links with the Catholic Church. She described herself as a ‘free-lancer’ on numerous occasions, though she found a home within the Church of England as discussed below.

15 Evelyn Underhill, ‘Place of the Will, Intellect and Feeling in Prayer’, Interpreter 9.3 (1913), pp. 241-56, reprinted in Essentials in Mysticism (London: J.M. Dent, 1920).

16 Hewlitt Johnson, edited the Interpreter from 1905 until he left to serve as Dean of Manchester Cathedral, working with William Temple, then Bishop of Manchester. He went on to become Dean of Canterbury Cathedral 1931–1963, see John Butler, The Red Dean (London: Scala, 2011), pp. 24-27. Cropper dates Underhill’s connection with him beginning in 1927, her contributions to the Interpreter show their connection began at least as early as 1913.

17 Butler, The Red Dean, p. 24.

18 Butler, The Red Dean, p. 25.

19 Butler, The Red Dean, p. 25.

20 ‘Place of the Will, Intellect and Feeling in Prayer’, Essentials in Mysticism (London: J.M. Dent, 1920), p. 99.

21 ‘Mysticism and the Doctrine of Atonement’, Interpreter 10.4 (1914), pp. 131-48, reprinted and quoted here from Essentials in Mysticism, p. 48.

22 ‘The Mystic and the Corporate Life’, Interpreter 11.2 (1915), pp. 143-60, reprinted and quoted here from Essentials in Mysticism, pp. 25, 43.

23 Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Man’s Spiritual Consciousness (1911) (London: Methuen, 3rd edn, 1912), p. 518.

24 The London Times, 1 April 1914, p. 6; Spectator, 4 April 1914, p. 17. Neville Figgis CR, Churches in the Modern State (London: Longman’s, Green, 1913), pp. ix-xi. Underhill’s contribution here was ‘The Mystic and Corporate Life’.

25 Evelyn Underhill, ‘The Prayer of Silence’, Challenger 3.59 (June 1915), p. 125.

26 Underhill also contributed an article, ‘Problems of Conflict’ to the Hibbert Journal in 1915. This along with a letter to the editor, published in Challenge, 4 June 1915, show her concern with the underlying issues regarding the war. This letter is overtly political, lamenting the Church of England, ‘has failed us…they have been following the lead of the politicians and militarists…it does not seem so enormously out of place for those who stand for Christian thought to use their influence in trying to avert such fratricidal slaughter’. She registered her disappointment that ‘one fails to hear of any individual or corporate action since on these lines’ (p. 126).

27 Underhill would go on to contribute articles to another journal edited by Temple, Pilgrim, ‘Some Implicits of Christian Social Reform’, Pilgrim 3.2 (1923), pp. 141-57.

28 F.W. Dillistone, Charles Raven (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1975), p. 114.

29 Challenge, 14.341 (1920), pp. 4-5.

30 The Church Congresses were annual events, beginning in 1861, to discuss social, moral, theological and other issues. These meetings had a large and tolerant remit but had no legislative authority within the Church of England, instead facilitating discussions on contemporary issues. For example, see ‘The Church Congress, Subjects and Speakers for the Week’, Manchester Guardian, 18 October 1920, p. 14. The correspondent, while critical of much of the programme, described the session delivered by Underhill, Frere, and Barnes as one that ‘cannot fail to be in itself an unforgettable experience’.

31 Barnes served as Bishop of Birmingham from 1924–1953. He was appointed Master of the Temple in 1915. Underhill’s husband, Stuart Moore, was a barrister of the Inner Temple and they may have met through this connection.

32 Co-founder of the Anglican religious order, the Community of the Resurrection, Mirfield, and Bishop of Truro (1923–35). He was Underhill’s spiritual advisor after the death of Baron von Hügel. He would work with Underhill on the revision of the Prayer Book and share a number of platforms with her.

33 The London Times, 23 October 1920, p. 10.

34 Evelyn Underhill, The Letters of Evelyn Underhill (ed. Charles Williams; London: Longmans, Green, 1943), pp. 195-96.

35 Acceptance speech, KPP75, 3/2/2, King’s College, London Archives, p. 7.

36 L.P. Jacks, letter to Evelyn Underhill, 13 May 1921, KPP75, 1/11/1, King’s College, London Archives.

37 ‘The Sources of Power in the Human Life’, Hibbert Journal, 19.3 (April, 1921), pp. 385-400. L.P. Jacks was editor of the Hibbert Journal from is inaugural edition in 1902 until 1948.

38 ‘Sources of Power’, p. 389.

39 Practical Mysticism (London: J.M. Dent, 1914).

40 ‘Sources of Power’, p. 391.

41 Evelyn Underhill, Life of the Spirit and the Life of Today (London: Methuen, 1922). This book had seven editions published during Underhill’s life.

42 Evelyn Underhill, Life of the Spirit and the Life of Today (ed. Susan Howatch; Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse, 1994), p. 206. All quotations taken from this edition.

43 Life of the Spirit and the Life of Today, p. 208.

44 Life of the Spirit and the Life of Today, p. 209.

45 Life of the Spirit and the Life of Today, p. 215.

46 Life of the Spirit and the Life of Today, p. 219. Underhill saw this deprivation close up during her visits to families she sought to help in the early 1920s. She writes that these visits were ‘often of a heart-breaking kind; for they are always in some sort of trouble & misery poor darlings, often actually hungry, & its so little one can do to rescue them’ (KPP75, 3/3/2, King’s College, London Archives, p. 6).

47 Life of the Spirit and the Life of Today, p. 224.

48 Life of the Spirit and the Life of Today, p. 226.

49 Life of the Spirit and the Life of Today, p. 228.

50 Life of the Spirit and the Life of Today, p. 221.

51 Ramsey commented that ‘perhaps the best exposition of the new trend of her thinking is found in The Life of the Spirit and the Life of Today and Man and the Supernatural. In these books much of the style and stress of the earlier books remains. But the frame of belief is different with the duality of Creator and creature, and the revelation of God in the Word-made-flesh always prominent’ (Evelyn Underhill: Anglican Mystic [Oxford: SLG Press, 1996], p. 10).

52 Letters (ed. Williams), pp. 152-53.

53 Cropper, Evelyn Underhill, p. 93.

54 Letters (ed. Williams), p. 307. In this letter Underhill’s ecumenicism is clear, ‘I see some signs of the beginning of this movement [towards a New Christian England], and one is the new and marked tendency of the various Christian bodies to draw together and work together’.

55 This organization developed through a merger of earlier groups including the Christian Social Union, in which Charles Gore, along with Scott Holland and E.K. Talbot, were involved, the Wesleyan Methodist Union for Social Services, and other social service unions which united to form an International Social Service Union which include Roman Catholics, the Established and the Free Evangelical Churches, the Unitarians and the Friends. See Maurice B. Reckitt, Maurice to Temple (London: Longman, 1946), pp. 138-47; and Stephen Spencer, ‘William Temple and the Temple Tradition’, in Theology Reforming Society (London: SCM Press, 2017), pp. 85-107 (88-89). The ICSS published widely, organized lectures, sermons, discussion groups and conferences. The Summer School at Swanwick, was initiated in 1911. See S. Keeble, Christian Responsibility for the Social Order (London: Epworth Press, 1922), p. 182. For a further discussion of the origins of the ICSS see G. Neville, Free Time (Birmingham: University of Birmingham Press, 2004), p. 71.

56 Evelyn Underhill, ‘Some Implicits of Christian Social Reform’, Mixed Pastures (London: Methuen, 1933), p. 71. This essay was first printed in William Temple’s journal Pilgrim 3.2 (1923), pp. 141-57.

57 ‘Some Implicits of Christian Social Reform’, pp. 80, 83.

58 Underhill continued to publish works on the mystics and mysticism in the interwar years including her edition of Walter Hinton’s Scale of Perfection (1923). A significantly revised (12th) edition of her best-known work, Mysticism, appeared in 1930.

59 See Underhill’s description of her personal mystic and spiritual experiences throughout KPP75, 3/3/1, King’s College, London Archives, especially the entry for 21 December 1921, pp. 1-4. A transcription of this entry can be found in Dana Greene (ed.), Fragments from an Inner Life (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 1993), pp. 108-10.

60 For example, her ‘address to the Leaders of Girls Club’, 23 January 1923 and her ‘Degrees of Prayer’, given to the Guild of Health (1922), printed in Evelyn Underhill, Collected Papers (ed. L. Menzies; London: Longman Green, 1946), were initially printed as pamphlets.

61 Archbishop of York (1908–28) and Archbishop of Canterbury (1928–42).

62 Letters (ed. Williams), p. 150.

63 Letters (ed. Williams), p. 207.

64 Stephen Spencer, William Temple: A Calling to Prophecy (London: SPCK, 2001), p. 71. For further discussion on Temple and COPEC see John Kent, William Temple: Church State and Society in Britain, 1880–1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 116-25; Edward Loane, William Temple and Church Unity (London: Palgrave, 2016), pp. 155-56.

65 F.A. Iremonger, William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury: His Life and Letters (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1948), p. 335.

66 Charles Raven, letter to COPEC members, June 1927, MS. Ref. SAEUG/D/58, Wellcome Library, London.

67 Proceedings of COPEC (ed. Will Reason; London: Longman Green, 1924), pp. 15-16.

68 In her obituary published in the Manchester Guardian, Lucy Gardner, from a Bradford Quaker family, was described as the ‘real founder of COPEC’ and the ‘organizing spirit of an inter-denominational group in the first ten years of the century … which included William Temple and Charles Roden [Raven] among the Anglicans’. ‘Miss Lucy Gardner’, Manchester Guardian, 9 December 1944, p. 4. Underhill may have been acquainted with Gardner as early as 1914.

69 Peter Gordon and John White, Philosophers as Educational Reformers (New York: Routledge, 2010 [1979]), p. 130.

70 Letters (ed. Williams), p. 152.

71 Proceedings of COPEC, p. 22.

72 Proceedings of COPEC, p. 30.

73 Proceedings of COPEC, p. 30.

74 Proceedings of COPEC, p. 32.

75 Proceedings of COPEC, pp. 33-34.

76 Proceedings of COPEC, p. 35.

77 Pilgrim 4.4 (1924), pp. 373-81.

78 Mixed Pastures, pp. 84-93; Homiletic Review 105.2 (1933), pp. 143-46.

79 Cropper, Evelyn Underhill, p. 132.

80 The Nature of God and His Purpose for the World, COPEC Commission Report, vol. 1 (London: Longman Green, 1924), p. 176.

81 Those working on this sub-committee include: W.R. Maltby (Warden of the Wesley Deaconess Institute, Ilkley); E.K. Talbot, CR (Superior of the Community of the Resurrection, Mirfield); John Oman (Principal of Westminster College, Cambridge); David Cairns (Principal of United Free Church College, Aberdeen and Moderator of the Assembly of United Free Churches of Scotland); David Phillips (Professor at the United Theological College, Presbyterian Church of Wales); H.G. Wood (Director of Studies, Woodbrooke and Professor of New Testament Literature and Church History, Selly Oak College, Birmingham).

82 Lucy Gardner, letter, 15 November 1928, MS ref. SAEUG/D/58, Wellcome Trust Library, London.

83 Armstrong, Underhill, p. 238.

84 Carol Poston, ‘Introduction’, in C. Poston (ed.), The Making of a Mystic, New and Selected Letters of Evelyn Underhill (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2010), p. x; Joy Dixon, ‘Sex, Mysticism and Psychology in Early Twentieth-Century England’, Gender and History 25.3 (2013), pp. 652-67 (653).

85 Greene, Evelyn Underhill, p. 93; Cropper, Evelyn Underhill, p. 161.

86 Greene, Evelyn Underhill, p. 93.

87 Evelyn Underhill, Ways of the Spirit (ed. Grace Adolphsen Brame; New York: Crossroads, 1990), pp. 147-48.

88 This lecture was published as ‘The Christian Basis of Social Action’ in Mixed Pastures.

89 Quoted in Cropper, Evelyn Underhill, pp. 137-38, see also Evelyn Underhill, Concerning the Inner Life (Oxford: One World Press, 1995 [1926]), p. 14.

90 Ramsey says of Underhill’s work as a spiritual director, ‘She did much to extend the tradition of spiritual direction which elicits people’s own spiritual capacities and vocations and helps them to find themselves in paths of freedom’. Ramsey, ‘Evelyn Underhill’, p. 278.

91 Quoted in Cropper, Evelyn Underhill, p. 138.

92 Concerning the Inner Life (London: Methuen, 1926) was favourably reviewed in a number of newspapers and journals including the Spectator, The London Times, The Daily Herald in the UK, The Cape Times and The Cape Argus (South Africa), The Southern Cross (Australia) and the New York Herald, providing evidence for the international reach of Underhill’s work, and making clear the efficacy of her publication strategy.

93 Cropper, Evelyn Underhill, p. 143.

94 Evelyn Underhill, ‘The Essentials of the Prayer Book’, in Maurice Relton (ed.), The Revised Prayer-Book (London: Allen and Unwin, 1927), pp. 45-62. Underhill’s cousin, Francis Underhill, later Bishop of Bath and Wells, also contributed to this volume.

95 The London Times, 30 June 1927, p. 21.

96 Underhill, in The London Times: ‘Laymen and the Prayerbook’, 9 March 1927, p. 12; ‘Pray for Common Sense’, 15 October 1927, p. 13; ‘Pray for Common Sense: A Response to the Bishop of Barking’, 24 October 1927, p. 8.

97 Cropper, Evelyn Underhill, p. 141.

98 ‘Hill of the Lord’, Spectator, 19 November 1927, pp. 869-70. Walter Frere, whom Underhill was now in close contact with, was involved in the discussions and design of the new Prayer Book. See Philip Corbett, ‘Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Prayer Book Revision and Beyond’, Nicholas Stebbing and Benjamin Gordon-Taylor (eds.), Walter Frere: Scholar, Monk, Bishop, (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2011), pp. 162-78 (162). Underhill had expressed dismay that Frere and his fellow CR brother, Talbot, were unable to join the meeting of Bishops and clergy in Chester to discuss the revival of prayer among the clergy. As Cropper points out, Underhill was the only woman in attendance at this high level meeting (Cropper, Underhill, p. 142).

99 Quoted in Cropper, Evelyn Underhill, p. 141.

100 The Spectator was first published in 1828. In 1928 the paper was edited by Evelyn Wrench.

101 Quoted in Cropper, Evelyn Underhill, p. 153. Greene notes that Underhill wrote more than 170 reviews and 13 articles for the Spectator in addition to her editorial work (Greene, Evelyn Underhill, p. 110).

102 ‘The Lambeth Report’, Spectator, 23 August 1930, p. 4.

103 ‘The Way of Renewal’, PP 75, 3/4/16, King’s College London Archives. A transcription of this document, with some minor editorial insertions, was published by Grace Adolphsen Brame in the Christian Century, 31 October 1990, p. 998.

104 St Clair Donaldson DD, ‘The Jerusalem Chamber Fellowship of Prayer’, International Review of Mission 16.1 (1927), pp. 121-25 (122, 123).

105 Cropper, Evelyn Underhill, p. 131.

106 ‘Study Scheme on the Holy Spirit in the Church’, PP75, 3/4/17, King’s College, London Archives.

107 ‘The Lambeth Report’, p. 4.

108 Quoted in Cropper, Evelyn Underhill, pp. 181-82.

109 Evelyn Underhill, Worship (London: Nisbet, 1936). Greene, Evelyn Underhill, p. 120.

110 Quoted in Cropper, Evelyn Underhill, p. 182.

111 T.E. Johnson, ‘Anglican Writers at Century’s End: An Evelyn Underhill Primer’, Anglican Theological Review 80.3 (1998), pp. 402-13 (410).

112 Loades, ‘Mysticism and Worship’, p. 57. Loades also suggests that Worship may have had some influence on the liturgical changes in the Catholic Church in Vatican II, p. 69.

113 Greene, Evelyn Underhill, p. 123.

114 Underhill was a committed pacifist by the end of the 1930s. See her pamphlets, A Meditation on Peace (1939), The Spiritual Life in Wartime (1939), Prayer in Wartime (1939), The Church and War (1940).

115 Worship, p. 342.

116 Evelyn Underhill, The School of Charity (London: Longman Greens, 1934), p. 70.

117 Evelyn Underhill, Collected Papers (ed. Lucy Menzies; London: Longman Greens, 1946), p. 104.

118 Evelyn Underhill, The Spiritual Life (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1937).

119 The Spiritual Life, pp. 137-38.