Victorian Cosmopolitanism and English Catholicity in the Mid-Century Novel

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-viii

   PDF

2. Introduction: “A Home for the Lonely”

   • Teresa Huffman Traver

   Pages 1-22

3. Shipwrecks, House-Fires, and Mourning Rings

   • Teresa Huffman Traver

   Pages 23-46

4. Losing a Family, Gaining a Church

   • Teresa Huffman Traver

   Pages 47-78

5. Conversion, Duality, and Vocation: The Perpetual Curate

   • Teresa Huffman Traver

   Pages 79-104

6. “Home by Michaelmas”: Yonge’s Tractarian Domestic

   • Teresa Huffman Traver

   Pages 105-122

7. Conclusion: “Desire of Nations”

   • Teresa Huffman Traver

   Pages 123-128

8. Back Matter

   Pages 129-133

   PDF

Victorian Cosmopolitanism and English Catholicity in the Mid-Century Novel argues that the Creedal doctrines of “the communion of saints” and the “holy Catholic Church” provided Victorian novelists—both Roman Catholic and Protestant—with a means of exploring religious forms of cosmopolitanism. Building on research exploring the divisions between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism in Victorian literature and culture, Teresa Huffman Traver considers the extent to which anti-Catholicism, domesticity, and national identity were linked. Huffman Traver connects this research with cosmopolitan theory, and analyzes how the conception of Catholicity could be used to reach beyond national identity towards a transnational community. Investigating the idea of a “rooted” cosmopolitanism, grounded in the local and limited in scope, this Pivot book offers a new angle on how religion, domesticity, and national identity were constructed in nineteenth-century British culture. 

• Victorian domestic fiction
• Catholicism in England
• anti-Catholicism
• Protestantism in Victorian England
• cosmopolitan theory
• religion and identity
• British and Irish Literature

“Traver has written a book which sketches some exciting new perspectives on Victorian religious fiction while showing, more explicitly (and in a brief epilogue), that it has a more than antiquarian interest. This book should be read by anyone who works on Victorian fiction, and most definitely by those interested in its religious dimension.” (J. Russell Perkin, Victorian Studies, Vol. 64 (2), 2022)

• California State University, Chico, Chico, USA

  Teresa Huffman Traver

Teresa Huffman Traver is Associate Professor of English at The California State University, Chico, USA. She specializes in Victorian literature and children’s literature. Her work has appeared in Literature/Film Quarterly, Victorian Review, and Women’s Writing.

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