Ronald C. Wendling

The son of a heating salesman and a bookkeeper, Ronald Wendling grew up in Buffalo, New York and attended a Jesuit high school there. He spent the late nineteen fifties and early sixties as a Jesuit seminarian but left the order well before he was due to be ordained to the Catholic priesthood. After a brief teaching stint at Saint Joseph's, a Jesuit University in Philadelphia, Ronald married, earned his Ph.D. in English Literature, and returned to Saint Joseph's, where he taught English until his retirement in 2006. He has published extensively on the British Romantic poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and other nineteenth-century British writers. He is the author of a previous book on Coleridge's religious philosophy and his memoir, Unsuitable Treasure: An Ex-Jesuit Makes Peace with the Past, was published by Oak Tree Press on April 6th 2015.

Ronald and his wife of nearly fifty years reside just outside Philadelphia and feel fortunate to have their two married daughters living close by. They spend their summers on Page Lake in the Endless Mountains of Northeast Pennsylvania.