Nineteenth-century observers of social and religious life in England felt that religion, class and gender were frameworks that previous generations had taken for granted but that were becoming more and more problematic as the century progressed. An analysis of Margaret Oliphant s Chronicles of Carlingford in the context of contemporary fiction and nonfiction demonstrates the extent to which these novels contributed to the contemporary debate.
Oliphant offers a comprehensive and uncommonly balanced picture of the most visible parties in English religious life in the 1860s and 70s and draws...