The Trinity Circle: Anxiety, Intelligence, and Knowledge Creation in Nineteenth-Century England. By William J. Ashworth. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021. viii + 256 pp. $55.00 hardcover

In staking out a theologically and socially conservative protest to the emergent liberal order, the Trinity Circle were in harmony with three other mid-century ecclesial movements: first, a substantial body of Anglican Evangelicals (who, pace Hilton, were not all Ricardian ideologues); second, High Church Anglicans; and third, so-called “Christian Socialists” whose thought radiated from the theology of Frederick Denison Maurice (1805–1872). Birks’ inaugural lecture praised his old tutor's vision for moral philosophy and sounded many of the typical Trinity Circle themes concerning opposition to the “selfish morality” of “a creed which would resolve the conscience of man into some curious product of nervous ganglions. . . . branded on the soul by the power of numbers.” [...]the book needed more sustained engagement with the theological tradition emanating from Maurice, who also served as Knightbridge Professor (1866–1872).