In Romantic Catholics Carol E. Harrison offers an important and timely reminder of the various movements within French Catholicism in the post-Revolution era. Beginning by reminding us of the overwhelming anticlericalism of the establishment during the third Republic, Harrison writes clearly and interestingly on the major tendencies which permeated the life of younger Catholics during this important period. Her examples are well chosen, especially her choice of de Guerin and de Montalembert as a way of looking afresh at the overall importance of Félicité de Lammenais to the development of French Catholic liberalism prior to the imposition of the Syllabus of Errors by Pius ix. The chapter on de Montalambert exposes clearly the overall problem of obedience, the importance of the Syllabus to the French Church, especially the effect that it had on the emerging liberal multinationalism of other lay thinkers, and the overall deadening effect of the Syllabus on the teaching ethos of the average parish clergy, which was one of the causes of many of the anti-Church polemics mentioned by Harrison; this is well documented but might have benefitted from a deeper analysis. The chapters on Pauline Craven and on the Ozanams are well constructed and enable Harrison to maintain her well sustained and cogently reasoned general thesis. The spiritual importance of French liberal Catholicism during the nineteenth century, and especially the effect on the international Church of the founding of the Society of St Vincent de Paul, have tended to be unjustifiably diminished when set against the more conventional sanctity of such figures as John Vianney and Theresa of Lisieux. There is less mention of the remarkable growth in the number of young women who demonstrated their romanticism by joining enclosed and teaching orders of nuns. It was also the period of the founding of orders dedicated to the direct relief of the socially disadvantaged, such as the Little Sisters of the Poor, another facet of the growth of a Catholic social conscience. In her use of the lives of major female figures of the Catholic Romantic period, Harrison demonstrates how, despite their officially subservient position, Catholic women in France played a major role in the development of the Church in the mid-nineteenth century. There has been a need for such a book for some years, to combat the more popular view of this period as one of intransigent Catholicism and its deliberate separation from the liberalism of European politics. This well researched and clearly written book should be recommended reading for all students of the development of both romantic and social Catholicism against the background of the politics of laicisation in the Third Republic.