Essays and Reviews

A collection of seven articles that appeared in 1860, sparking a Victorian culture war that lasted for at least a decade. With pieces written by such prominent Oxford and Cambridge intellectuals as Benjamin Jowett, Mark Pattison, Baden Powell and Frederick Temple, the volume engaged the relations between religious faith and current topics of the day in education, the classics, theology, science, history, literature, biblical studies, hermeneutics, philology, politics and philosophy. Upon publication, the church, the university, the press, the government and the courts, both ecclesiastical and secular, joined in an intense dispute. The book signalled an intellectual and religious crisis, raised influential issues of free speech, and questioned the authority and control of the Anglican Church in Victorian society. This critical edition provides extensive annotation to map the various positions on the controversies that the book provoked. The editors place the volume in its complex social context and supply commentary, background materials, composition and publishing history, textual notes, and a range of new supporting documents, including material from the trials, manifestos, satires, and contemporary illustrations.