Domestic Biography
The Legacy of Evangelicalism in Four Nineteenth-Century Families
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Oxford University Press
Published:6th Mar '97
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
Winner of the Whitfield Prize for 1997
An account of the influence of evangelicalism upon eminent Victorians. Recording family life was an important ritual in Victorian households and the author uses documents from the archives of four families to analyze the biographical tradition and its lasting effects upon "family values".Christopher Tolley examines the writing of biography in four Victorian families: the Macaulays, Stephens, Thorntons and Wilberforces. Their fathers had been memebers of the prominent group of evangelicals and philanthropists known as the Clapham sect, and their histories were shaped by a cultivated and demanding brand of evangelicalism, which left its mark even when the parental faith was lost. The family biographers celebrate this common legacy, testifying to the success of the evangelical movement in its campaign on behalf of domestic piety. The tradition of biography is given fact and form by the wealth of documentation produced within evangelical homes, to which later generations added their significant contribution. Dr Tolley draws extensively on unpublished material in the family archives, discusses the uses and conventions of nineteenth-century domestic biography, and explores its close relationship with other kinds of private family writing. The result is a fascinating account of the influence of evangelicalism upon eminent Victorians.
The book is carefully objective, and the author allows the documents he has studied to tell their own story. * Church Times, 4 July 1997 *
The book is carefully objective, and the author allows the documents he has studied to tell their own story. * Church Times, 4 July 1997 *
offers charming window into evangelical family life in the period after Newton * John Pollock, Church of England Newspaper *
the book is well written and, through apt quotation, gives a vivid sense of the tone and atmosphere of life in such evangelical families, in which sermons and jokes could readily coexist ... Tolley is sensitive to nuances of language and to changing perceptions of the relationship between private and public. * Jane Garnett, Wadham College, Oxford, EHR June 99 *
- Winner of Winner of the Whitfield Prize for 1997.
ISBN: 9780198206514
Dimensions: 225mm x 144mm x 23mm
Weight: 491g
304 pages