Overall, this is a thought-provoking book that continues the important project of revaluing theologys significance for Victorian fiction, alongside the work of scholars like Susan E. Colón, Joshua King, Mark Knight, and J. Russell Perkin. Readers who have engaged with contemporary work in narrative theology may be intrigued by its conclusions about storytelling and community * Modern Philology * The ubiquity of Christ is not just a theological principle; its also a fact of Victorian culture. Jessica Ann Hughes has brilliantly taken on this alpha and omega of all themes, and traced it insightfully across some of the periods influential works of fiction. Jesus in the Victorian Novel is Victorian Studies at its very best. * Timothy Larsen, McManis Professor of Christian Thought and Professor of History at Wheaton College, USA and author of A People of One Book: The Bible and the Victorians * Mainstream Victorian realists reimagined Jesus not to debunk the Christian story, as Jessica Hughes shows, nor to secularize it, but rather to relocate it within a decidedly modern sensibility. Such is the premise of this spectacular, beautifully argued book. Along the way, too, we encounter much additional intrigue: German higher criticism, the periods tensions between theology and science, rival atonement theories, andperhaps most interesting of allthe question of how best to represent God in fiction. Some works are especially easy to recommend. This is one of them. * Ryan J. Stark, Professor of Humanities, Corban University, USA *
