SOURCE: "Eric Gill," in Modern Christian Revolutionaries: An Introduction to the Lives and Thought of Kierkegaard, Eric Gill, G.K. Chesterton, CF. Andrews, Berdyaev, The Devin-Adair Company, 1947, pp. 161-228.

In the following excerpt, Attwater discusses Gill's life and beliefs, and delineates his unique brand of socialism.

Arthur Eric Rowton Gill was born on February 22nd, 1882, at Brighton, and his first home was in a suburban street of this town which he afterwards characterized as a shapeless and meaningless mess. He was the second of thirteen children. His father was a minister of that small sect, "connection," called after its foundress, Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, and he was a man of earnestness, culture and probity, of a type very common in nineteenth-century England. Eric had other ecclesiastical associations: not only did he marry the daughter of the sacristan of Chichester cathedral, but his paternal grandfather and great-uncle were missionaries...