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Fashionable Goodness: Christianity in Jane Austen's England Kindle Edition
The Church of England was at the heart of Jane Austen's world of elegance and upheaval. Fashionable Goodness: Christianity in Jane Austen's England explores the church's role in her life and novels, the challenges that church faced, and how it changed the world. In one volume, this book brings together resources from many sources to show the church at a pivotal time in history, when English Christians were freeing enslaved people, empowering the poor and oppressed, and challenging society's moral values and immoral behavior.
Readers will meet Anglicans, Dissenters, Evangelicals, women leaders, poets, social reformers, hymn writers, country parsons, authors, and more. Lovers of Jane Austen or of church history and the long eighteenth century will enjoy discovering all this and much more:
- Why could Mr. Collins, a rector, afford to marry a poor woman, while Mr. Elton, a vicar, and Charles Hayter, a curate, could not?
- Why did Mansfield Park's early readers (unlike most today) love Fanny Price?
- What part did people of color, like Miss Lambe of Sanditon, play in English society?
- Why did Elizabeth Bennet compliment her kind sister Jane on her "candour"?
- What shirked religious duties caused Anne Elliot to question the integrity of her cousin William Elliot?
- Which Austen characters exhibited "true honor," "false honor," or "no honor"?
- How did William Wilberforce, Hannah More, and William Cowper (beloved poet of Marianne Dashwood and Jane Austen) bring "goodness" into fashion?
- How did the French Revolution challenge England's complacency and draw the upper classes back to church?
- How did Christians campaigning to abolish the slave trade pioneer modern methods of working for social causes?
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateOctober 20, 2022
- File size13172 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"Finally! Fashionable Goodness: Christianity in Jane Austen's England is the Jane Austen reference book that's been missing from the bookshelves of every Austen fan and scholar. I can't wait to add this to my research collection and keep it at my fingertips whenever I'm writing about Austen's faith and the religious lives of her characters. Thank you to Brenda S. Cox for creating this invaluable resource!"
Rachel Dodge, Praying with Jane
"Fashionable Goodness offers a magisterial study of the ways in which the Christian faith and the Anglican Church of Jane's day were not only foundational for her personal life but also for her talent as a writer.
"Detailed study of the novels is revealed throughout this book and constant reference and quotation from the novels show how strongly Christian beliefs and ethics underpin Jane's work. The book fully underlines that to read the novels without a religious framework in mind leaves the reader missing vitally important points about the presentation of both her plots and her characters.
"Brenda Cox's scholarly and detailed work is a triumph. It is easily read, . . . extremely helpful and accurate and particularly so when dealing with titles and the life and inner workings of the Anglican Church and its clergy in the late 18th century.
"The volume also provides a wide and fascinating panorama of Anglicanism in the 18th century and of the various challenges the Church and wider society faced. In effect the volume is a marvellous compendium and a valuable handbook to turn to when reading (or indeed re-reading) the novels; the many insights it offers will undoubtedly instruct and enrich an understanding and appreciation of Jane's skill as a writer and of her life as a devout Christian."
Michael Kenning, Rector of Steventon 1992-2010, Vice-Chairman of the Jane Austen Society
"A meticulously researched, faultlessly organized, and engaging study of how religion, in all its forms, features in Jane Austen's world, her life, and her writings.
"Starting with Henry Tilney's famous defense of 'the English' in Northanger Abbey, Cox reveals the facts of Jane Austen's faith and the realities and challenges of practicing religion in the Regency period. With biographical sketches of the leading religious leaders and analyses of the various denominations of the time, she puts into context the explicit and subtle religious references in Austen's novels.
"This Christian world permeates Austen's writings. . . . You will look at Mr. Collins, the Crawfords, the Dashwoods, the Tilneys, the Wickhams, the Willoughbys, and especially Fanny Price!-all the 'good' and the 'not so good' people who populate the novels, with new and surprising insights. Bravo to Brenda Cox for giving us this very accessible, illuminating take on the 'fashionable goodness' of Austen's era!"
Deborah Barnum, Jane Austen in Vermont, Bygone Books, and Reading with Austen: Returning the Lost Sheep of Godmersham
"Brenda Cox's Fashionable Goodness is an indispensable guide to all things religious in Jane Austen's world. . . . a proper understanding of 18th century Christianity is necessary for a full appreciation of Austen's works. Cox provides this understanding. . . . This work will appeal to novice readers of Austen as well as scholars and specialists."
Roger E. Moore, Vanderbilt University, Jane Austen and the Reformation
About the Author
Product details
- ASIN : B0BF1BRP17
- Publisher : Topaz Cross Books (October 20, 2022)
- Publication date : October 20, 2022
- Language : English
- File size : 13172 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 756 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #409,536 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Brenda S. Cox is fascinated by the history of Jane Austen’s time and the nuances of Austen’s delightful, insightful books. Her own faith led her to start exploring the church in Austen’s novels and world. She was excited to find new depths in Austen’s works and astonishing connections with world-changing movements during this pivotal era in history. She spent almost ten years researching, including visits to England, hunting up many, many books and resources, some obscure and not easily available, and digging through them to answer her multiplying questions. So, she decided to write this book to provide all that information in one accessible place for others who love Jane Austen or history.
A popular speaker at Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA) meetings, Brenda Cox has shared about church-related topics, ranging from satirical cartoons to country curates, at regional and national meetings, and contributes regularly to their academic journal, Persuasions On-Line. She also loves connecting regularly with thousands of Austen fans at Jane Austen’s World and on her own blog, Faith, Science, Joy, and Jane Austen.
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Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
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“Fashionable Goodness: Christianity in Jane Austen’s England” by Brenda S. Cox has been on my radar for a few months now and I recently bought it and just devoured it. Not only did it address my questions about Jane Austen and her faith, but it broke down how the Anglican church functioned; the basic tenants of faith; baptism; Communion; forgiveness; prayer; the differences between rectors, vicars, and curates (there’s also more than one type of curate, didn’t know that!), livings. The book also covers the Evangelical movement and how the Methodist church began, and Austen’s feelings on Evangelicals, and how many other Anglicans felt about them. We’re also introduced to devout Christians of the era, some of who were contemporaries of Austen. The Wesley brothers, John Newton (author of hymn “Amazing Grace”), Hannah More (author of novels and tracts, and champion of reform), William Wilberforce (politician who dedicated most of his life to ending slavery and the slave trade); etc…
As I am rereading Austen, I feel I can better understand the characters’ religious convictions and when the words principles or serious subjects are used, I know what she is referring to. Though this book is primarily about Austen, church history, and religious beliefs, it did encourage me to examine my own faith and had me researching and going to the Scriptures. "Fashionable Goodness" is a must-read for any Austen-lover and Christian!
I highly recommend it for anyone who is interested in Austen's work, and also for anyone who is interested in the evolution of religious history and social justice.
The paperback edition is gorgeous, well-constructed, and well-indexed. The bibliography speaks to the impeccable research Cox did for the book, and the glossary is incredibly useful. As a bonus, there's even more on Cox's website with additional materials that could not fit into the printed book, which adds to the value of this book. Everything you have ever wanted to know about Jane Austen's religious life, the Church of England in her lifetime, and the Christians surrounding her is handily collected within Fashionable Goodness, and I know this book will be pulled from my shelf for more and more reads in the years to come.
Top reviews from other countries
Very interesting, well researched book! Some really great insights into the Church of England during Jane Austen's times. Enriched my reading of Austen's novels.
I retract half a star because of some chapters relying a little too heavily on Jane Austen's text, which I have read already, and because sometimes there were too many word definition astrixes.