Joseph Pearce

Five Christian Writers Who Changed My Life

Chesterton · Tolkien · Lewis · Belloc · Solzhenitsyn

An Inner Sanctum Production

I owe my life to five writers.

I do not say this metaphorically. As a young man I was twice imprisoned for political extremism, lost in an ideology of hatred, until I stumbled upon G. K. Chesterton. What followed was the conversion of an enemy. Across five days, meet the men who saved me and shaped the Christian imagination of the twentieth century: Chesterton, Tolkien, Lewis, Belloc, and Solzhenitsyn. You'll read their ideas and discover why these are the writers we most need now. First letter arrives immediately.

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The Author

Joseph Pearce

Why listen to me?

✓I teach as Visiting Professor of Literature at Ave Maria University, edit the St. Austin Review, and serve as series editor of the Ignatius Critical Editions.
✓I am the only living writer to have published full-length books on all five of these men.
✓I sat across from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his home near Moscow and listened to him speak of faith and suffering.
✓I was twice imprisoned for inciting racial hatred. Chesterton converted me. I tell that story in my memoir Race with the Devil, and again across these five letters.

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The Five Companions

Who you will meet.

Five writers who shaped the literary imagination of the past hundred years.

Day 1

G. K. Chesterton

The Apostle of Wonder

I felt as if magic must have a meaning, and meaning must have some one to mean it.

Why astonishment is the only rational response to existence, and how a journalist with a pencil broke the prison walls of modern materialism.

Day 2

J. R. R. Tolkien

The Faithful Sub-Creator

I am a Christian, and in fact a Roman Catholic.

The hidden Christianity at the heart of Middle-earth, and the single date in The Lord of the Rings that unlocks the entire epic.

Day 3

C. S. Lewis

The Reluctant Convert

The most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.

How the most reluctant atheist in Oxford became Christianity's most beloved twentieth-century defender, and why he stopped a step short of Rome.

Day 4

Hilaire Belloc

The Neglected Genius

Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine, there's always laughter and good red wine.

The thunderous Catholic intellectual whose pen Chesterton himself called the finest in England, and whose memory the modern world has tried to forget.

Day 5

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The Saint from the Gulag

Men have forgotten God; that is why all this has happened.

What a Soviet prison-camp survivor saw about the modern West that the West has never been able to unsee and why his warning is more urgent now than when he gave it.

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Joseph Pearce

Five Christian Writers Who Changed My Life

Chesterton · Tolkien · Lewis · Belloc · Solzhenitsyn

An Inner Sanctum Production

Thank you. I do not say this lightly.

Letter #1 is on its way, and should arrive within the next ten minutes.

Three Quick Steps

To make sure my letters reach you.

i.Add [email protected] to your contacts.
ii.Check Promotions or Spam if Letter #1 doesn't appear in your Primary inbox within ten minutes.
iii.Reply with a single word — even just “received” — and Gmail will know to deliver future letters straight to you.

Yours faithfully,

Joseph Pearce

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An Inner Sanctum Production

From the desk of Joseph Pearce

The Doors Are Open

the founding

from the twenty-fourth of August to the first of October

❦

Dear Friend,

You asked, some weeks ago, to be told when the doors opened. I am writing to tell you: they are open.

The Inner Sanctum is a private house for readers who would sooner spend an evening with Chesterton and Tolkien than with the noise of the hour. The fire is lit, the conversation is begun, and this week's poem is already chosen. You know by now what it holds: four readings a week, in the same voice, and the company of men and women who have also read Belloc, and felt less alone for it.

That house will stand open for years. But it is only being founded once, and it is being founded now. Founding is not a discount. It is a standing. Whoever comes in by the first of October comes in as a founder.

Your founding price, kept for life. The Fireside will not stay ten dollars forever. When the price rises for those who come later, and it will, yours will not move by a penny, for as long as you remain.
A permanent place by the Founders' Hearth. Your name written in the founders' roll, and kept there for as long as the house stands.
An evening each year, kept for founders alone. Once a year I gather the founders, wherever in the world we each may be, and speak of what I am writing, and where the work is going next.
A small token, made and set aside. That only founders will hold.

The conversation does not pause. The upper rooms are small because they must be: a hundred readers in the Study, fifteen in the Library, five chairs at the High Table. I have kept them small so that I can know who is in them.

Forty readers have stood at these doors since midsummer, waiting for them to open. The fire is no longer mine alone. This week's poem will be read aloud whether you are in the room to hear it or not.

The founding ends on the first of October

Take your place by the Fireside, ten dollars a month

Ten dollars a month. Leave the moment it stops serving you; the door opens from the inside as easily as from the out.

Or see the three quieter rooms above it: the Study, the Library, and the High Table ›

The door itself is kept by Patreon, who handle the housekeeping of payments. Everything beyond it is mine, and yours.

Until we meet by the fire,

Joseph

P.S. After the first of October the house remains open, and you will always be welcome. But the founding of a house happens once. Whoever is inside it before then was there at the raising of the roof, and that can never afterwards be bought, because it can never afterwards be true.

Verum · Pulchrum · Bonum

Joseph Pearce

An Inner Sanctum Production

The doors are open.

You asked to be told, and I am telling you. The Inner Sanctum is open, and until the first of October it is being founded. Whoever comes in by the first of October comes in as a founder. Your founding place by the Hearth is waiting.

For five days you have kept company with five writers. The Inner Sanctum is where that company does not end. This week's poem is already chosen, and it will be read aloud whether you are in the room to hear it or not.

I have wanted to build this room for a long time. A place for readers who would sooner spend an evening with Chesterton and Tolkien than with the noise of the hour. You have just told me you are one of them. I am glad of it.

What is held for you

·Your founding price, kept for life. For as long as you remain, it will not rise.
·A permanent place by the Founders' Hearth, and the standing that comes with it.
·An evening each year kept for founders alone, where I speak of what I am writing, where my thinking is turning, and where the work is going.
·A small token, made and set aside, that only founders will hold.

Founding is not a discount. It is a standing, given to the readers who came first.

The founding ends on the first of October

Take your place by the Fireside, ten dollars a month ›

Ten dollars a month. Leave the moment it stops serving you; the door opens from the inside as easily as from the out.

Look about from the fire

The four rooms of the house, if you missed them.

Each room has its own page, with everything it holds set out in full. Most readers come in by the fire and look about from there.

Meet by the Fireside$10 a month · always open

Four new readings every week of the year: a poem, a favourite, a talk by the fire, and a diary.

See what the Fireside holds ›

Meet in the Study$20.83 a month · ninety-five seats remain

Four times a year I answer you on camera, and the Coveted Tolkien and Lewis Lectures: a 45-piece series, already recorded.

Look inside the Study ›

Meet in the Library$83.33 a month · thirteen seats remain

Twice a year you sit with me live for an hour or more. Spring and autumn. If you miss it, you get the recording.

Look inside the Library ›

Meet at the High Table$5,000 a year · five seats

Two hours with me online, once a year, on whatever you want, and dinner with me in person once a year.

Look inside the High Table ›

Each door holds all that the doors below it hold, and adds its own.

One small thing, so none of this is lost over the coming weeks: add [email protected] to your contacts, and look for my name. Everything comes by email.

If a friend of yours belongs in a room like this, send them the course.

The fire is lit, and the chair nearest it is yours.

Until we meet by the fire,

Joseph Pearce

An Inner Sanctum Production

From the desk of Joseph Pearce

Meet by the Fireside

$10 a month

always open

❦

Dear Friend,

If these days have given you anything, it was not information. It was company. The Fireside is where the company stays: a little reading together each week, in the same voice, for as long as you care to stay. This week's poem is already chosen.

Here, in plain words, is everything a place by the Fireside gives you.

4×every week of the year

Poem of the WeekI choose a poem, read it aloud, and tell you what it means and why I love it.

Revisiting Old FavouritesI return to a book I love, including writing of mine you will not find by browsing.

Home is Where the Hearth IsI talk with you as a friend would by the fire: literature, the arts, and whatever is on my mind.

A weekly diaryA letter from home, with the members’ room under it so the conversation can go on.

Ten dollars a month, the price of a book, for the company of everyone who has read it. The door stays open whether you come every week or only when you can. There is no cap on the Fireside, and no closing date.

It is open now, and until the first of October it is being founded. I should like you among the founders. Come in before then and the price you join at is yours for life, with a founder's place by the Hearth and a small token that only founders will have.

The founding ends on the first of October

Come in by the Fireside

Ten dollars a month. Leave the moment it stops serving you; the door opens from the inside as easily as from the out.

Yours, from the fireside,

Joseph

P.S. I should be glad of your company among the founders. Come in by the fire, and look about; the rooms above will still be there, and you may move deeper into the house whenever you wish.

An Inner Sanctum Production

From the desk of Joseph Pearce

Meet in the Study

$20.83 a month

$250 across a year · one hundred seats

❦

Dear Friend,

The Study is for the reader who wants more than an hour by the fire. Four times a year I answer you on camera, and the Tolkien and Lewis Lectures are already waiting. It holds everything the Fireside holds, and adds the work most readers cross this threshold for.

Here, in plain words, is everything a place in the Study gives you.

4×a year, on camera

Your question, answeredYou send me a question. I answer it on camera. You keep the recording and watch in your own time.

The Coveted Tolkien and Lewis LecturesA 45-piece series. A whole class on the two writers, already recorded, yours to keep.

And everything in the Fireside, too:

Poem of the Week
Revisiting Old Favourites
Home is Where the Hearth Is
A weekly diary, and the members’ room under it

Twenty dollars and eighty-three cents a month, which comes to $250 across a year, and the course alone is worth more than that. There are one hundred seats in the Study, and no more. Ninety-five of them remain as I write.

It is open now, and until the first of October it is being founded. Founding is not a discount. It is a standing. Come in before then and the price you join at is yours for life, with a founder's place by the Hearth and a small token that only founders will have.

The founding ends on the first of October

Enter the Study

Twenty dollars and eighty-three cents a month, which comes to $250 across a year. Leave the moment it stops serving you; the door opens from the inside as easily as from the out.

Yours, from my desk,

Joseph

P.S. If the course is more than you wish to take on today, come in by the Fireside instead. Everything in the Study sits above it, and you may climb the stairs whenever you are ready.

An Inner Sanctum Production

From the desk of Joseph Pearce

Meet in the Library

$83.33 a month

$1,000 across a year · fifteen seats

❦

Dear Friend,

The Library is a smaller room, kept for fifteen. Thirteen of those seats remain as I write. I have kept them few so that I can know who is in them. It holds everything in the Study and the Fireside, and adds the thing I can give only a few: you sit with me live, twice a year.

Here, in plain words, is everything a place in the Library gives you.

2×a year, live with me

You sit with me liveAn hour or more together, once in the spring and once in the autumn. If you miss it, you get the recording.

And everything in the Study, too:

Your question, answered, four times a year
The Coveted Tolkien and Lewis Lectures

And the whole of the Fireside beneath it: Poem of the Week, Revisiting Old Favourites, Home is Where the Hearth Is, and a weekly diary.

Eighty-three dollars and thirty-three cents a month, which comes to $1,000 across a year. Fifteen seats, and no more. Thirteen remain as I write.

It is open now, and until the first of October it is being founded. Founding is not a discount. It is a standing. Whoever comes in by the first of October comes in as a founder, and the price you join at is yours for life, with a founder's place by the Hearth and a small token that only founders will have.

The founding ends on the first of October

Take your seat in the Library, $83.33 a month

Thirteen of the fifteen seats remain. Leave the moment it stops serving you; the door opens from the inside as easily as from the out.

Yours, from my desk,

Joseph

P.S. After the first of October the house remains open, and you will always be welcome. But the founding of a house happens once, and that cannot afterwards be bought, because it cannot afterwards be true. If the Library is more than you wish to take on, the Study and the Fireside sit beneath it.

An Inner Sanctum Production

From the desk of Joseph Pearce

Meet at the High Table

$5,000 a year

five seats

❦

Dear Friend,

The High Table is a small company of five, no more, and I have kept it small so that I can know who is in it. It holds everything in the Library beneath it, and adds what cannot be given to many: two hours with me, and dinner with me in person.

Here, in plain words, is the company a place at the High Table keeps.

1×a year, two ways

A two-hour sit-down, onlineTwo hours with me, one to one, online. We talk about whatever you want: academic, personal, or spiritual.

Dinner, in personDinner with me in person. You may bring a guest. I pay for the meal.

And everything in the Library, too:

You sit with me live, twice a year

And everything in the Study and the Fireside as well: your question answered four times a year, the Coveted Tolkien and Lewis Lectures, and four readings every week by the fire.

$5,000 for the year. There are five seats.

If one draws you, come in at the High Table.

Take your place at the High Table

Five thousand dollars for the year. Leave the moment it stops serving you; the door opens from the inside as easily as from the out.

Yours, and in hope of meeting you,

Joseph

P.S. Come in by the fire first if you wish, and look about. The High Table is a small room, and it will still be there.

Inner Sanctum · The Four Rooms

An Inner Sanctum Production

From the desk of Joseph Pearce

The Four Rooms

The fire is lit, and this week's poem will be read whether you are in the room to hear it or not. If you have not chosen, come in by the fire.

❦

Meet by the Fireside

$10 a month

always open · no cap

4×every week of the year

Poem of the WeekI choose a poem, read it aloud, and tell you what it means and why I love it.

Revisiting Old FavouritesI return to a book I love, including writing of mine you will not find by browsing.

Home is Where the Hearth IsI talk with you as a friend would by the fire: literature, the arts, and whatever is on my mind.

A weekly diaryA letter from home, with the members’ room under it so the conversation can go on.

Take your place by the Fireside

Ten dollars a month. Leave the moment it stops serving you; the door opens from the inside as easily as from the out.

Meet in the Study

$20.83 a month

$250 across a year · ninety-five seats remain

4×a year, on camera

Your question, answeredYou send me a question. I answer it on camera. You keep the recording and watch in your own time.

The Coveted Tolkien and Lewis LecturesA 45-piece series. A whole class on the two writers, already recorded, yours to keep.

Everything in the Fireside comes with it.

Enter the Study, $20.83 a month

Leave the moment it stops serving you; the door opens from the inside as easily as from the out. Ninety-five of the hundred seats remain.

Meet in the Library

$83.33 a month

$1,000 across a year · thirteen seats remain

2×a year, live with me

You sit with me liveAn hour or more together, once in the spring and once in the autumn. If you miss it, you get the recording.

Everything in the Study and the Fireside comes with it.

Enter the Library, $83.33 a month

Leave the moment it stops serving you; the door opens from the inside as easily as from the out. Thirteen of the fifteen seats remain.

Five seats

Meet at the High Table

$5,000 a year

five seats

1×a year, two ways

A two-hour sit-down, onlineTwo hours with me, one to one. We talk about whatever you want: academic, personal, or spiritual.

Dinner, in personDinner with me in person. You may bring a guest. I pay for the meal.

Everything in the Library and every room beneath it comes with it.

Take your place at the High Table

Five seats. Leave the moment it stops serving you; the door opens from the inside as easily as from the out.

Until we meet by the fire,

Joseph

P.S. Come in by the fire, and look about. The Fireside is always open; the upper rooms are small, and sometimes full.

I owe my life to five writers.

Why listen to me?

Who you will meet.

Thank you. I do not say this lightly.

Between letters, I keep the conversation going.

The doors are open.

Between letters, I keep the conversation going.