Literature, Religion, and Postsecular Studies Lori Branch,% Series Editor All Rights Reserved. Copyright © The Ohio State University Press, 2015. Batch 1. All Rights Reserved. Copyright © The Ohio State University Press, 2015. Batch 1. Imagined Spiritual Communities in Britain’s Age of Print % Joshua King The Ohio State University Press Columbus All Rights Reserved. Copyright © The Ohio State University Press, 2015. Batch 1. Copyright © 2015 by The Ohio State University. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data King, Joshua, 1979– author. Imagined spiritual communities in Britain’s age of print / Joshua King. pages cm — (Literature, religion, and postsecular studies) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8142-1293-6 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Religion and literature—England—19th century—History. 2. Religion and the press— England—19th century—History. 3. Christianity and literature—England—History—19th century. 4. Spiritual formation. I. Title. II. Series: Literature, religion, and postsecular studies. PR145.K56 2015 820.9'382—dc23 2015020921 Cover design by TG Designs Text design by Juliet Williams Type set in Adobe Garamond Pro Printed by Thomson-Shore, Inc. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Ma- terials. ANSI Z39.48–1992. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 All Rights Reserved. Copyright © The Ohio State University Press, 2015. Batch 1. For Naomi, my wife, and Elise, my daughter, who surprise me with joy All Rights Reserved. Copyright © The Ohio State University Press, 2015. Batch 1. All Rights Reserved. Copyright © The Ohio State University Press, 2015. Batch 1. CONTENTS% Acknowledgments • ix INTRODUCTION Religion, Reading, and Imagining Nineteenth-Century Britain • 1 PART 1 APOLOGISTS FOR PRINT-MEDIATED SPIRITUAL COMMUNITIES CHAPTER 1 Coleridge’s Aids to Reflection: The Clerisy and a National Spiritual Republic of Letters • 21 CHAPTER 2 F. D. Maurice’s Universal Society: National Spiritual Community in a Sectarian Print Culture • 57 CHAPTER 3 Arnold’s Poetic National Church: Anarchy and the Charming Force of Poetry • 96 All Rights Reserved. Copyright © The Ohio State University Press, 2015. Batch 1. viii CONTENTS PART 2 VIRTUAL CONGREGATIONS AND PRINTED POETIC CYCLES CHAPTER 4 John Keble’s Christian Year: Private Reading and Imagined National Religious Community • 129 CHAPTER 5 Tennyson’s “New Christian Year”: In Memoriam and the Minimum of Faith • 159 CHAPTER 6 In Memoriam’s Open Secret: The Public Forms of Private Faith • 189 CHAPTER 7 Christina Rossetti’s Verses: A Multi-Fashioned Community of Strangers • 232 CONCLUSION The End of Print-Mediated Christian Britain and the Rise of Digital Spiritual Communities • 289 Bibliography • 303 Index • 323 All Rights Reserved. Copyright © The Ohio State University Press, 2015. Batch 1. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS% I have benefitted immensely from responses to portions of this book by audiences at the University of Toronto, Wheaton College, Baylor Uni- versity, the Coleridge Summer Conference, and several conferences held by the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism and the North American Victorian Studies Association. Baylor University gener- ously supported my research with summer sabbaticals in 2010 and 2012 and a research leave in fall 2012. The staff at Ohio State University Press has been exceptional. I am especially indebted to (then) Senior Editor Sandy Crooms, who first inquired into my work on this project in 2011 and remained invested even when my own will was close to faltering. Lindsay Martin, who became Acquisitions Editor for Literary Studies when Sandy went to the University of Pittsburgh, is everything I could wish for in an editor—highly skilled, patient, and ready to cheer when at last the finish line is crossed. Suggestions from the two outside reviewers for OSUP have made this book much better than it would have been otherwise. I would never have reached this point without the talented staff at the Armstrong Browning Library at Baylor University, especially Rita Patteson, Cyndie Burgess, Melvin Schuetz, Jennifer Borderud, Christi Klempnauer, Glenda Ross, and Melinda Creech (who is also one of my graduate students). Mary Shrader heroically sifted through hundreds of periodicals in support of my work. My cooperation with the Library has entered a new stage with · ix · All Rights Reserved. Copyright © The Ohio State University Press, 2015. Batch 1. x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS my appointment as the Margarett Root Brown Chair in Robert Browning and Victorian Studies in 2014. I am thrilled to be working with such an outstanding group of people. Few English departments have been blessed with a chair as wise and devoted to the success of her faculty as Dianna Vitanza. Colleagues in Baylor’s Nineteenth-Century Research Seminar (19CRS), for several years now an indispensable intellectual community for me, have joined many others across campus in challenging my thinking and preserving my belief in the value of the academy. I cannot name all who should be recognized, but several deserve special mention: James Barcus, David Clinton, Michael DePalma, Luke Ferretter, Tom Hanks, David Jeffrey, Hope Johnston, David and Maura Jortner, Kristen Pond, Richard Russell, Lisa Shaver, Joe Stubenrauch, Dan Walden, and Ralph Wood. Kara Poe Alexander, Sarah Rude, and Danielle Williams joined several of those already men- tioned in pointing me to the digital spiritual communities discussed in my conclusion. Michael Milburn, my research assistant at the time of writ- ing this book and one of my graduate students, belongs in all these cat- egories. He is also one of the most intellectually gifted yet unpretentious people I know. Many colleagues outside of Baylor have been instrumental to the formation and completion of this book, among them Kirstie Blair, Lori Branch (the editor for this series), Daniel Cook, Graham Davidson, Karen Dieleman, Anne Frey, Dayton Haskin, Diane Hoeveler, Regina Hewitt, Colin Jager, Mark Knight, Charles LaPorte, Meredith Martin, Emma Mason, William McKelvy, John Powell, Marjorie Stone, and Susan Wolfson. Adam Potkay graciously sent me penetrating and encouraging feedback on my manuscript in the nick of time. Johnny Jones has helped me weather more crises of confidence than I care to count in the past few years, and in the process taught me the dis- cipline of true friendship. During leaves from Baylor for writing, my par- ents, Robert Stephen King and Mae Belle King, offered the harbor of their home and, as always, their unconditional love. My brother, Caleb Barrett King, among the most brilliant people I know, has fanned my intellectual curiosity back into flame when it felt closest to extinguishment. Naomi, my wife, and Elise, my daughter, continually rescue me from myself by their love and the sheer delight of their company. This book, to which they have contributed more than I could hope to acknowledge, is for them. Less than a page of the introduction appeared in “A Post-Secular Vic- torian Study: Religion, Reading, and Imagining Britain” in Nineteenth- Century Prose 39.1/2 (Spring/Fall 2012), used by permission of the editor, Barry Tharaud. An earlier and shorter version of chapter 1 appeared as All Rights Reserved. Copyright © The Ohio State University Press, 2015. Batch 1. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi “Coleridge’s Aids to Reflection, Print Culture and Mediated Spiritual Community” in European Romantic Review 23.1 (2012) (journal website: www.tandfonline.com / http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/105 09585.2012.639183), used by permission of Taylor & Francis Ltd./Rout- ledge. A different version of the last two sections of chapter 1 appeared as “Coleridge’s Clerisy and Print Culture” in The Coleridge Bulletin 40 (2012), used by permission of the Friends of Coleridge. A small and altered por- tion of chapter 3 will be included in “The Inward Turn: The Role of Mat- thew Arnold” in The Routledge Companion to Literature and Religion, ed. Mark Knight (Routledge 2015), used by permission of Taylor & Francis Ltd./Routledge. An earlier version of chapter 4 appeared as “John Keble’s The Christian Year: Private Reading and Imagined National Religious Com- munity” in Victorian Literature and Culture 40.2 (2012), used by permis- sion of Cambridge University Press. A few paragraphs in chapters 5 and 6 appeared, in different form, in “Christianity: Introduction” inReading the Abrahamic Faiths: Rethinking Religion and Literature, ed. Emma Mason (Bloomsbury 2014), used by permission of Bloomsbury Academic. All Rights Reserved. Copyright © The Ohio State University Press, 2015. Batch 1. All Rights Reserved. Copyright © The Ohio State University Press, 2015. Batch 1. INTRODUCTION% RELIGION, READING, AND IMAGINING NINETEENTH-CENTURY BRITAIN We are in the silent school of Reflection, in the secret confessional of Thought. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Aids to Reflection in the Formation of a Manly Character (1825) If you looked down upon [London] from the top of St. Paul’s, . you would not have such a panoramic view of the streets and houses as you have in a large sheet of advertisements. There you see the outsides of the houses and some indistinguishable figures walking about in the streets; here you have a glimpse into the insides of them, some little hint of what these people are walking about for, of some of the thoughts that are going on in their hearts. [Such anonymous] notices . tell us of some fellow citizen, some fellow-creature of ours . [T]hese advertisements [tell us] that there must be something else than [buying and selling] to bind us together, and make us live together and work together, as men are meant to do. — Frederick Denison Maurice, “On the Use and Abuse of Newspapers” (1852) We [have] felt that through [The Christian Year’s] pages of hallowed thoughts we could hold communion with thousands of pious hearts, whose prejudices and convictions otherwise separate us most widely. — Braden William, The British Quarterly Review (July 1867)1 .