In recent decades there has been a growing recognition of the significance of the supernatural in a Victorian context. Studies of nineteenth-century spiritualism occultism magic and folklore have highlighted that Victorian England was ridden with spectres and learned magicians. Despite this growing body of scholarship little historiographical work has addressed the Devil. This book demonstrates the significance of the Devil in a Victorian context emphasising his pervasiveness and diversity. Drawing on a rich array of primary material including theological and folkloric works fiction newspapers and periodicals and broadsides and other ephemera it uses the diabolic to explore the Victorians' complex and ambivalent relationship with the supernatural. Both the Devil and hell were theologically contested during the nineteenth century with an increasing number of both clergymen and laypeople being discomfited by the thought of eternal hellfire. Nevertheless the Devil continued to play a role in the majority of English denominations as well as in folklore spiritualism occultism popular culture literature and theatre. The Devil and the Victorians will appeal to readers interested in nineteenth-century English cultural and religious history as well as the darker side of the supernatural. |The Devil and the Victorians Supernatural Evil in Nineteenth-Century English Culture | History
