Religion and Irreligion in Victorian Society (Essays in Honor of R.K. Webb)

First published in 1992.This volume of eleven specially commissioned essays celebrates the work of Robert K. Webb, one of the foremost historians of modern Britain. The contributors, established scholars from Britain, Canada, Australia and the United States, address some of the central themes in the history of nineteenth-century religion, including evangelicalism and the culture of the market economy, religious issues in the liberal politics of the 1830s, the radical atheist Robert Taylor, Charles Darwin, the Victorian ideal of `manliness', nineteenth century images of Mary Magdalene, the Jews in Victorian society, colonialism, the role of women missionaries as models of female achievement, and spiritualism during the Great War. Together these essays make a significant contribution to the study of the role of religion in Victorian society.