A. S. T. Fisher

Arthur Stanley Theodore Fisher (1906–1989)^[1] was a mid-20th-century Church of England priest and writer. He wrote a number of poems, religious works and local histories as A. S. T. Fisher and one novel under the pseudonym Michael Scarrott.

Family

Fisher was the son of Reverend Arthur Bryan Fisher (1870–1955),

Fisher studied at Christ Church, Oxford, where he lived on the same stair as W. H. Auden.^[5] The two students had frequent late-night arguments about religion,^[6] and in 1925, Fisher reintroduced Auden to Christopher Isherwood.^[7] In 1926, Auden's mother, Constance, was concerned about her son, so Fisher wrote to her "the fact that he is naturally more self-sufficient than most people explains why he finds so little need for a personal God – or for a Mother".^{[5][6][dead link]}

In 1928, the journal Oxford Poetry published three of Fisher's poems.^{[6][dead link]}

Career

By early 1934,^[8] Fisher was chaplain of the recently founded Bryanston School, a public school in Dorset,^[4] but had left by February 1935.^[9] By 1952, he was chaplain of Magdalen College School, Oxford,^[2] and by 1970, he was Vicar of Westwell, Oxfordshire.^[10]

Fisher wrote books of prayers and other Christian matters, poems, and later three histories of parishes in

• An Anthology of Prayers Compiled for use in School and Home. London: Longman. 1934.
• Voice and Versed: an Anthology in Three Parts for Community-Speaking in Schools – Selected and Edited. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1946.
• The Comet and Earlier Poems. Frederick Muller. 1948.
• Happy Families. The Meaning of Sex for Young Teenagers. 1961.
• 50 Days to Easter. Devotional Readings for the Lenten Season. London: A.R. Mowbray. 1964.
• The History of Broadwell, Oxfordshire, with Filkins, Kelmscott and Holwell. privately published. 1968.
• The History of Kencot, Oxfordshire. privately published. 1970.
• History of Westwell, Oxfordshire. Bear Court Books. 1972.
  ISBN 0950169013
  .
• Records of Christianity, Volume II: Christendom (6th–14th centuries). Oxford:
  ISBN 0631171703
  .
• Selected Poems. Oxford: privately published. 1978.