Nephi Anderson’s Added Upon: An Example of Home Literature

Orson Whitney urged Latter-day Saints to produce a “pure and powerful literature” (paragraph 4). He reminded them that this home literature would be “for God’s glory, not man’s. . . . If the words you speak are not as red-hot embers from the flaming forge of a sincere and earnest soul, they will never set on fire the souls of your hearers” (11).
     These words were a call to action for Nephi Anderson, who wrote Added Upon. The unique Mormon theology that almost overwhelms the book is reminiscent of Whitney’s instruction to produce literature that was diverse and uniquely Mormon, using the Holy Ghost as its muse rather than the Greek and Roman so-called muses of ancient literature. The opening line of the novel immediately proclaims that we’re sons and daughters of God. The book then jumps right in to the story of Jesus and Lucifer each offering themselves up as the Savior and the resulting war in heaven. Anderson’s description of people in the premortal life (“No two were alike, yet all bore an impress of the Creator, and each had an individual beauty of his own”) foreshadows the words in “Family: A Proclamation to the World” that state that we were all made in God’s image. With little explanation, the book uses theological terms obscure to those outside the Latter-day Saint faith such as “agency” and “second estate.”
     Overall, the theology in Added Upon is much more pronounced than the story (and often interrupts what would otherwise be natural characterization and dialog), but that only exemplifies how seriously Anderson took Whitney’s invitation to produce a literature from his earnest soul that was “for God’s glory, not man’s.”