Mount Royal Academy announced today that author Joseph Pearce will serve as Visiting Scholar beginning this fall. Pearce is the renowned biographer of Catholic literary figures such as G.K. Chesterton, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Hilaire Belloc.
As Visiting Scholar Pearce will deliver public lectures on Shakespeare and masterworks such as J.R.R. Tolkien’s Hobbit, as well as the thought of G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis. He will assist within the Academy with curricular and faculty development, and mentor students who wish to advance their abilities as young writers.
Pearce has worked extensively on numerous projects throughout his career. He has authored books exploring the affiliations of Shakespeare and C.S. Lewis with the Catholic Church. He has hosted a series on EWTN about Shakespeare’s Faith and is currently filming special documentaries for the network about Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings.
Pearce is also the co-founder and co-editor of the St. Austin Review, an international magazine dedicated to reclaiming Catholic culture, and is the series editor of the Ignatius Critical Editions. In addition to all these accomplishments, he has been a privileged speaker at universities and colleges throughout the world.
As a youth, Pearce was involved with the National Front, a white nationalist party in his native England. He wrote violent and scathing articles for Bulldog, the Front’s associated magazine, which he developed and edited. In fact, his comments were so provocative that he was imprisoned twice by the British authorities.
Despite his explosive behavior and agnosticism, Pearce encountered and yielded to saving grace. After reading the works of G.K. Chesterton—who would become a literary hero for him—he began to look differently on his radically violent lifestyle. The illuminating ideas discussed by Chesterton, ideas wholly new to young rebel, became the basis for Pearce’s conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1989.
Pearce is delighted to work with the community at Mount Royal Academy, a place in which students study and read the Great Books of Western civilization, evaluating their transcendent truths, measuring them in light of errors, and comparing them with Natural Law, the Church’s teachings and Scripture. This in-depth study, illuminated by our Catholic faith, has made Mount Royal’s academics unique in many ways.
“We are blessed to have Joseph Pearce working with our high school students and faculty this year,” said David Thibault, Headmaster at Mount Royal Academy. “Joseph will be an inspiration to our students and the broader community as he shares his conversion story and great literary insights at Mount Royal and at various speaking engagements throughout the Upper Valley.”