John Dryden's celebrated conversion to Roman Catholicism is revealed in this provocative study as the culmination of a lifelong search that began with his youth in an actively Puritan family. Atkin's familiarity with the religious thought of the times allows him to range widely among Dryden's contemporaries and predecessors and to bring a fresh perspective to those key poems in Dryden's religious development: Religio Laici and The Hind and the Panther. Through a sensitive reappraisal of all Dryden's texts -- including those less widely known -- Atkins shows that Dryden had a...