Heaven, Hell, and the Victorians

The Victorians were obsessed with death, bereavement, and funeral rituals, and speculated vigorously on the nature of heaven, hell, and divine judgment. This popular abridgement of Michael Wheeler’s award-winning Death and the Future Life in Victorian Literature and Theology looks at the literary implications of Victorian views of death and the life beyond, and recreates vividly the fear and hope embodied in the theological positions of the novelists and poets of the age. Now accessible to a wide readership, Heaven, Hell, and the Victorians offers a wide-ranging and attractively illustrated cultural history of nineteenth-century religious experience, belief, and language in the face of death.

• Award-winning study now made newly accessible for a wider readership in this paperback abridgement • Dazzling review quotes from daily/Sunday newspapers and academic journals; reviewers include Penelope Fitzgerald and A. S. Byatt • Wide-ranging literary and theological emphasis, references to art and music: adds up to a cultural history of Victorian ideas about death

Introduction; 1. Death; 2. Judgment; 3. Heaven; 4. Hell; Conclusion.

From reviews of Death and the Future Life in Victorian Literature and Theology: ‘ … dazzling and marvellously informative’. Fiona McCarthy, The Times

‘The book is what George Steiner has called it, a work of ‘formidable and incisive learning’.’ Penelope Fitzgerald, The Observer

‘ … brilliant’. Antonia Byatt, Mail on Sunday