The Damnation of Theron Ware (first published in England as Illumination) is an 1896 novel by American author Harold Frederic.

Set in upstate New York, the novel presents a portrait of 19th-century provincial United States, the religious life of its ethnic groups, and its intellectual and artistic culture.

Theron Ware is a promising young Methodist pastor recently assigned to a congregation is small town in the Adirondack Mountains, which Frederic modeled after Utica, New York.

His "illumination" consists of his awakening to new intellectual and artistic experiences embodied by several of his new acquaintances including the town's Catholic priest who introduces him to the latest Biblical scholarship; a local man of science, who eschews religion and advocates for Darwin; and a local Irish Catholic girl with musical talent and artistic pretensions, with whom Theron becomes infatuated.

[1] First published in 1896 in the UK as Illumination and in the US as The Damnation of Theron Ware, it received a positive critical reception and sold well.

"[7] In turn, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in a letter to Lewis that Main Street had "displaced Theron Ware in my favor as the best American novel.”[8]