In Victorian Reformations: Historical Fiction and Religious
Controversy, 1820-1900, Miriam Elizabeth Burstein analyzes the ways in
which Christian novelists across the denominational spectrum laid claim
to popular genres--most importantly, the religious historical novel--to
narrate the aftershocks of 1829, the year of Catholic Emancipation. Both
Protestant and Catholic popular novelists fought over the ramifications
of nineteenth-century Catholic toleration for the legacy of the
Reformation. But despite the vast textual range of this genre, it
remains virtually unknown in literary studies. Victorian Reformations
is the first book to analyze how "high" theological and historical
debates over the Reformation's significance were popularized through the
increasingly profitable venue of Victorian religious fiction. By putting
religious apologists and controversialists at center stage, Burstein
insists that such fiction--frequently dismissed as overly simplistic or
didactic--is essential for our understanding of Victorian popular
theology, history, and historical novels. Burstein reads "lost" but once
exceptionally popular religious novels--for example, by Elizabeth Rundle
Charles, Lady Georgiana Fullerton, and Emily Sarah Holt--against the
works of such now-canonical figures as Sir Walter Scott, Charles
Dickens, and George Eliot, while also drawing on material from
contemporary sermons, histories, and periodicals. Burstein demonstrates
how these novels, which popularized Christian visions of change for a
mass readership, call into question our assumptions about the
nineteenth-century historical novel. In addition, her research and her
conceptual frameworks have the potential to influence broader paradigms
in Victorian studies and novel criticism.
