Alpha and Omega is a collection of essay

Essay

An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...

s, lecture

Lecture

thumb|A lecture on [[linear algebra]] at the [[Helsinki University of Technology]]A lecture is an oral presentation intended to present information or teach people about a particular subject, for example by a university or college teacher. Lectures are used to convey critical information, history,...

s, and letters written by Jane Ellen Harrison

Jane Ellen Harrison

Jane Ellen Harrison was a British classical scholar, linguist and feminist. Harrison is one of the founders, with Karl Kerenyi and Walter Burkert, of modern studies in Greek mythology. She applied 19th century archaeological discoveries to the interpretation of Greek religion in ways that have...

 and published for Harrison during the outbreak of World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

.

Contents

• Crabbed Age and Youth — read to Trinity College
  Trinity College, Cambridge
  Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Trinity has more members than any other college in Cambridge or Oxford, with around 700 undergraduates, 430 graduates, and over 170 Fellows...
  
  
• Heresy and Humanity (1912) — published by the Cambridge
  Cambridge
  The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...
  
   Society of Heretics
• Unanimism and Conversion — published by the Cambridge Society of Heretics
• "Homo Sum" — letter to an anti-suffragist
• Scientiae Sacra Fames — read before the London Sociological Society
• The Influence of Darwinism
  Darwinism
  Darwinism is a set of movements and concepts related to ideas of transmutation of species or of evolution, including some ideas with no connection to the work of Charles Darwin....
  
   on the Study of Religions
  Evolutionary origin of religions
  The evolutionary origin of religions theorizes about the emergence of religious behavior during the course of human evolution.- Nonhuman religious behavior :...
  
   — or "The Creation of Darwinism of the Scientific Study of Religions." (143)
• Alpha and Omega
  Alpha and Omega
  The term Alpha and Omega comes from the phrase "I am the alpha and the omega" , an appellation of Jesus in the Book of Revelation ....
  
   — read to Trinity College
  Trinity College, Cambridge
  Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Trinity has more members than any other college in Cambridge or Oxford, with around 700 undergraduates, 430 graduates, and over 170 Fellows...
  
  ; "if we are to keep our hold on Religion, theology must go." (179)
• Art and Mr. Clive Bell — response to Art by Clive Bell
  Clive Bell
  Arthur Clive Heward Bell was an English Art critic, associated with formalism and the Bloomsbury Group.- Origins :Clive Bell was born in East Shefford, Berkshire, in 1881...
  
   (1914)
• Epilogue on the War: Peace and Patriotism

Purpose

In Alpha and Omegas preface, Harrison explains why she published such various topics, ranging from magic to post-Impressionism

Impressionism

Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...

, in one work. She says, "Seen in the fierce glar of war, these theories -- academic in origin and interest -- ... seemed like faded photographs." (v-vi) World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 had brought a melancholy to Harrison's life because pacifist

Pacifism

Pacifism is the opposition to war and violence. The term "pacifism" was coined by the French peace campaignerÉmile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress inGlasgow in 1901.- Definition :...

leanings, as admitted in the Epilogue, isolated her.