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?
Explore the church of Jane Austen's world in Fashionable Goodness: Christianity in Jane Austen's England.
Author Biography:
Brenda S. Cox is fascinated by the history of Jane Austen's time and the nuances of Austen's delightful and 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. Brenda first discovered Austen as a young mom living overseas, when she came across a copy of Emma. After devouring it, she immediately bought a complete set of Austen's novels. Each time she re-reads the books, she falls in love again with Austen's humor, deep insights into life and human nature, and finesse as a writer. She is now passing that love on to her grandchildren, reading the novels aloud together as Austen's own family did.Brenda loves learning and appreciated the privilege of homeschooling her four children because she got to learn so much along with them. She also enjoys cross-stitching Jane Austen projects and reading a wide range of books. She worked internationally for many years and values the beautiful variety of cultures and languages, which she expressed in her book on languages, Who Talks Funny? She earned a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering, a master's in applied linguistics, and, now in her third career, is loving writing about Jane.Fashionable Goodness: Christianity in Jane Austen's England is Brenda S. Cox's first book related to Jane Austen. Please visit her at brendascox.wordpress.com and as brendascoxregency on Facebook.
