The volume presents three nineteenth-century manuscripts originally created for the use of bishops of Carlisle: Walter Fletcher's -Diocesan Book-, written between 1814 and 1845, and Bishop Hugh Percy's two parish notebooks, compiled between 1828 and 1855. Based on visitations, and on articles of enquiry now lost, they add to a growing body of knowledge relating to the condition of the Church in the first half of the nineteenth century, providing a unique record of livings in the Carlisle diocese prior to its expansion in 1856. In particular, they illuminate the concerns of two significant...

This book introduces the reader to a subject which, until now, has been almost totally ignored by scholars. Seeking to change the Cinderella status of parish magazines, the book reveals their importance as a source for the studies of both religion and mass-market publishing. Parish magazines usually contained commercially published 'insets', making them a microcosm of the Anglican Church's role as a conduit for national issues into the local community; yet, despite the propagandist potential and wide circulation of such magazines, their content offered subscribers a diet of anxiety and...