This book offers a reassessment of Henry Major (1871–1961), long-serving principal of Ripon Hall, Oxford, and editor of the Modern Churchman. Although born in England, Major grew up and was ordained in New Zealand before returning to become probably the most formative influence on English Modernism between the wars. The first four essays, by Clive Pearson, are a welcome and comprehensive account of Major's place in the Church of England, and also offer a general discussion of the somewhat quaint and optimistic style of Modernism he represented. There are fascinating asides on the personalities of English liberalism, as well as reflections on Major's role as parish priest in a small village near Oxford. Pearson's essays are followed by an extensively annotated version of Major's autobiographical fragment, A Modernist's pilgrimage. While its publication is to be welcomed it offers remarkably little insight into Major's personality, although there are many interesting details about his childhood and ordination in New Zealand, his time in Edwardian Oxford and some of the controversies surrounding the early years of Ripon Clergy College. The final two essays, by Allan Davidson and Peter Lineham respectively, discuss Major's limited influence in New Zealand: he returned once in 1929 and was subject to opposition on account of his ‘progressive’ views on biblical inspiration which shocked a deeply conservative country. The book concludes with a comprehensive bibliography of Major's massive body of writing, nothing of which remains in print. Perhaps what is most striking is just how distant his concerns were from those of the contemporary Church.