Reginald Heber – Bishop of Calcutta

Reginald Heber [1783-1826] served in Norway, Sweden and Russia before becoming the second bishop of Calcutta in 1823. My thanks to Redcliffe College for providing me with a copy to digitise. This book is in the Public Domain.

Arthur Montefiore [1859-1927], Reginald Heber. Bishop of Calcutta. Scholar and Evangelist. New York: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1894[?]. Hbk. pp.160. [Click to download complete book in PDF]

Contents

1. Early Years
2. Scandinavia and Russia in 1805
3. Among the Cossacks
4. The Country Parson
5. Literary Life
6. The Bishopric of Calcutta
7. The Last Year

Preface

As far as I am aware, no Life of Bishop Heber has appeared since that which his widow issued almost immediately after his death in 1826. This work was largely made up of his journal, his correspondence, various literary fragments, and newspaper reports of numerous meetings held in India and England to mark the universal regret felt at his sudden and almost tragic end, and to set on foot various statues and other memorials of his services to his country and his Church. The work was necessarily rendered so expensive by its bulk that no cheap and new edition of it could be expected, and consequently it has not lain in the power of the many who admired his career, or loved him for his gift of sacred song, to become acquainted with the main incidents of his life or the channels along which his thoughts and hopes had travelled.

It has therefore been thought that a sketch of his career would be welcome to not a few, and it has fallen to my lot to write an outline of his life which should indicate its chief features, and describe, if it does not fill in, the arc on which his energies were projected. [Continue reading]