Arthur Shearly Cripps

Arthur Shearly Cripps (10 June 1869 – 1 August 1952) was an English-born Anglican priest, missionary, activist, short story writer, and poet who spent most of his life in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).

Biography

Cripps was born in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, and was educated at Charterhouse School and Trinity College, Oxford, where he read history. He then trained for the Anglican priesthood at Cuddesdon Theological College, coming under the influence of Charles Gore. From 1894 he held the parish Ford End in Essex.

A friend of Frank Weston, the leading Anglo Catholic priest who would become Bishop of Zanzibar he became a missionary for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, intending to work in Mashonaland, after reading criticism of the methods of Cecil Rhodes. From 1902 he had a parish near Enkeldoorn (now known as Chivhu) in what was then Southern Rhodesia.

There is also a road in Harare, Cripps Road, which some say is named after Arthur Cripps, although Owen Sheers' book indicates the naming was for another dignitary of the same name. The road leading from Chivhu to Cripps' former mission base is however named Cripps Road in his memory.

Works Some Essex Verses (1930) Titania and Other Poems (1900) Primavera: Poems by Four Authors (1900) Jonathan: A Song of David (1902) The Black Christ (1902) poems Magic Casements (1905) Lyra Evangelistica: Missionary Verses of Mashonaland (1909) Faerylands Forlorn: African Tales (1910) The Two of Them Together: A Tale About Africa To-Day (1910) The Brooding Earth (1911) novel Pilgrimage of Grace, Verses on a Mission (1912) Bay-Tree Country (1913) novel A Martyr's Servant (1915) novel A Martyr's Heir (1916) novel Pilgrim's Joy Verses (1916) Lake and War: African Land and Water Verses (1917) Cinderella in the South: South African Tales (1918) An Africa for Africans: A Plea on Behalf of Territorial Segregation Areas and Their Freedom in a Southern African Colony (1927) Africa: Verses (1939)