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If you are interested in the Ecclesiologists or early Victorian church architecture, then this book, published in February 2001, will be of interest.

It consists of an important new series of essays on the Cambridge Camden Society, founded in 1839 and renamed the Ecclesiological Society in 1845 (for a brief history of this society and the current society, see History).

The book has been edited by two members of Council of the present Ecclesiological Society, Christopher Webster and John Elliott. The title is 'A Church as it Should Be': the Cambridge Camden Society and its Influence, and it is published by Shaun Tyas, ISBN 1900289350. The price in the UK is £40. Publisher's address: Shaun Tyas, 1 High Street, Donington, Lincolnshire, PE11 4TA, UK 01775 821542 or email pwatkins@pwatkinspublishing.fsnet.co.uk. The book is of 460 pages, with 87 photographic illustrations.
 

A most important feature is the the biographical list of all the members of the Society in its thirty year history, a mine for scholars researching patronage and churchmanship during the period.

The contents of the book are as follows:

• 'Absolutely Wretched': Camdenian attitudes to the late Georgian Church
• The roots of Ecclesiology: late Hanoverian attitudes to medieval churches
• 'Fond of Church Architecture': the establishment of the Society and a short history of its membership
• 'Mummeries of a Popish Character': the Camdenians and early Victorian worship
• 'Blink by [him] in Silence': the Cambridge Camden Society and A.W.N. Pugin
• 'The Stuff of a Heresiarch': William Butterfield, Beresford Hope, and the Ecclesiological vanguard
• A trusted disciple: Richard Cromwell Carpenter
• George Gilbert Scott and the Cambridge Camden Society
• Three men in a gondola: Ruskin, Webb and Street
• 'One of whom we know but little': John Loughborough Pearson and the Ecclesiologists
• George Wightwick: a thorn in the side of the Ecclesiologists
• Re-presenting the Church Militant: the Camden Society, church restoration, and the Gothic sign
• Ecclesiology in Scotland
• Nonconformist architecture and the Cambridge Camden Society
• 'A Mass all Sung to Ancient Music': the Society's influence on church music
• A Camdenian roll-call [biographical notes on all members]