Literature and religion in mid-Victorian England

Carolyn Oulton, Carolyn W. de la L'Oulton

"This book places Dickens and Wilkie Collins against such important figures as John Henry Newman and George Eliot in their response to the religious crisis of mid-nineteenth century England. In foregrounding this aspect of their most important work this study seeks to relocate Dickens and Collins in the context of contemporary debate. Both writers propounded a liberal Christian belief, often dismissed as naive or alternatively as a marketable fiction, in their own lifetime. Most later critics have made the same assumption. This study examines the intense particularity of religious debate in the nineteenth century, and the correspondingly ambiguous status of liberal Christianity. Surprisingly the treatment of religion in both Dickens and Collins is seen to be fraught with tension. The purpose of this book is to recover the difficulty with which Dickens in particular overcame his belief in Judgement and the subtlety of Collins's argument with his own evangelical upbringing."--BOOK JACKET.