Anglican Women Novelists ― From Charlotte Bront?to P.d. James

What do the novelists Charlotte Brontë, Charlotte M. Yonge, Rose Macaulay, Dorothy L. Sayers, Barbara Pym, Iris Murdoch and P.D. James all have in common? These women, and others, were inspired to write fiction through their relationship with the Church of England. This field-defining collection of essays explores Anglicanism through their fiction and their fiction through their Anglicanism.

These essays cover a range of literary genres, from life-writing and whodunnits through social comedy, children's books and supernatural fiction. Spanning writers from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, they testify both to the developments in Anglicanism over the past two centuries and the changing roles of women within the Church of England.

Judith Maltby is reader in Church History at Corpus Christ College, University of Oxford. As well as publishing widely on the history of the Anglican church, she is also an occasional contributor to BBC Radio 4, and The Guardian.

Alison Shell is Professor of English at UCL, London. Her publications include Shakespeare and Religion (2010) and Oral Culture and Catholicism in Early Modern England (2007).