Beginning with a wide-ranging introduction that explains why a theological reading of Victorian fiction is both rewarding and timely, Perkin also addresses religion's return to prominence in the twenty-first century, confounding earlier predictions of its imminent demise. Chapters on William Thackeray, Charlotte Bronte, Charlotte Yonge, Anthony Trollope, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy are followed by a concluding discussion of Mary Ward and Walter Pater that relates Pater's Marius the Epicurean to postmodern theology and shows how it remains a religious classic for our own time.
Informed...

David Lodge is a much-loved novelist and influential literary critic. Examining his career from his earliest publications in the late 1950s to his more recent works, David Lodge and the Tradition of the Modern Novel identifies Lodge's central place within the canon of twentieth-century British literature. J. Russell Perkin argues that liberalism is the defining feature of Lodge's identity as a novelist, critic, and Roman Catholic intellectual, and demonstrates that Graham Greene, James Joyce, Kingsley Amis, Henry James, and H.G. Wells are the key influences on Lodge's fiction. Perkin also...

David Lodge is a much-loved novelist and influential literary critic. Examining his career from his earliest publications in the late 1950s to his more recent works, David Lodge and the Tradition of the Modern Novel identifies Lodge's central place within the canon of twentieth-century British literature. J. Russell Perkin argues that liberalism is the defining feature of Lodge's identity as a novelist, critic, and Roman Catholic intellectual, and demonstrates that Graham Greene, James Joyce, Kingsley Amis, Henry James, and H.G. Wells are the key influences on Lodge's fiction. Perkin also...