Julia Markus is professor of English and director of Creative Writing at Hofstra University.

Chapter One: Sliding Toward Tasmania Character is a Victory, not a gift. -- J.A.F. He had been nothing but trouble for his father, a thorn in the archdeacon's side. Now he sat alone at the Exeter College high table, after the other diners left, listening to the crackle in the fireplace and staring at nothing in front of his eyes. He had taken off his scholar's gown, which lay in the chair next to him. He wore good worsted trousers that emphasized his long, lanky, athletic legs, and a dark gray jacket of a softer material that fit well and hung fine from his shoulders. It was the understated elegance of Oxford tailoring that proclaimed him a young man of some importance while discreetly draping the fire in his belly. He was tall, almost six feet, quite good-looking, with a long, pale face, strong nose, and cleft chin. His black hair was rather long and parted on the left side and his eyebrows emphasized his large dark eyes, which glowed with intellect and vivacity. Missing was the signature smile on his lips, commented upon by those who knew him through his life. Mysterious, that smile. The fact that it was missing while he sat there alone was proof, perhaps, that it was a smile used to reflect the smiles he met or to defend himself when people around him were far from smiling.James Anthony Froude was thirty years old that February of 1849, and Anthony -- as he was called -- had just destroyed the future that fronted him. He had not dined at the hall, nor been there the afternoon when his newly published book, The Nemesis of Faith, was thrown into the flames -- hellfire presumably meant for its author.It was all over. His career, his life in Oxford, any chance of reconciliation with his father. Ashes. He knew his rebellious novel -- about a Church of England cleric who doubted the divinity of Jesus Christ and had an affair with a sad married woman -- would cause an uproar at Oxford. But Anthony could have no idea that the book would burst past the small, inbred community that nurtured him for the last twelve years and become a cause celebre in the world at large -- read in the English-speaking world, debated in France, admired in Germany. It would make him famous in forward-thinking communities, and infamous everywhere else. Everyone who was anyone would talk about it, write about it to friends, or pen an opinion for the newspapers. The Nemesis of Faith would become the most relevant book of its day, speaking out to the wrenching religious doubts of an entire generation.This would be Anthony's last night at Exeter College, sitting alone and dejected at the high table. A few years before at the same table he had stirring conversations with the visiting American poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson -- a man who had long since given up his ministry in the Second Church Boston and set out on a spiritual quest. In Emerson, Anthony met a truly original thinker. Added to that, the American was a close personal friend of the author whose works were indelibly altering Anthony's views: Thomas Carlyle, by the 1840s an increasingly world-famous figure. In these men Anthony discovered a power and earnestness at least equal to that of the most brilliant of the Oxford churchmen: "With this difference: that I was no longer referred to books and distant centuries but to present facts and the world in which I lived and breathed."The emotional and intellectual kinship that Anthony felt for Emerson was enhanced by Emerson's face, which so resembled John Henry Newman's, who had attempted to bring Anthony to a different light: "Lead kindly Light, amid the enduring gloom, Lead thou me on." The future Cardinal Newman's poem is still sung, but Newman was no longer leading Anthony on. Emerson encouraged the doubt-ridden, emotionally torn Anthony in a new direction. Inspired him to go into the wilderness over his long vacation from his