Women Theology and Miner's Libraries

A couple more of Ashgate books with some points of interest for the Brontë aficionado:

Literary Theology by Women Writers of the Nineteenth Century
Rebecca Styler, University of Lincoln, UK
Imprint: Ashgate
Published: November 2010
ISBN: 978-0-7546-6735-3

Examining popular fiction, life writing, poetry and political works, Rebecca Styler explores women's contributions to theology in the nineteenth century. Female writers, Styler argues, acted as amateur theologians by use of a range of literary genres. Through these, they questioned the Christian tradition relative to contemporary concerns about political ethics, gender identity, and personal meaning. Among Styler's subjects are novels by Emma Worboise; writers of collective biography, including Anna Jameson and Clara Balfour, who study Bible women in order to address contemporary concerns about 'The Woman Question'; poetry by Anne Brontë; and political writing by Harriet Martineau and Josephine Butler.


As Styler considers the ways in which each writer negotiates the gender constraints and opportunities that are available to her religious setting and literary genre, she shows the varying degrees of frustration which these writers express with the inadequacy of received religion to meet their personal and ethical needs. All find resources within that tradition, and within their experience, to reconfigure Christianity in creative, and more earth-oriented ways.

Romance, Reason and Reality in Anne Brontë’s Poetry  is the title of Chapter 3.

The History of the Book in the West: 1914–2000
Volume V
Edited by Alexis Weedon, University of Bedfordshire, UK
Series : The History of the Book in the West: A Library of Critical Essays
Imprint: Ashgate
Published: April 2010
ISBN: 978-0-7546-2783-8

This collection brings together published papers on key themes which book historians have identified as of particular significance in the history of twentieth-century publishing. It reprints some of the best comparative perspectives and most insightful and innovatively presented scholarship on publishing and book history from such figures as Philip Altbach, Lewis Coser, James Curran, Elizabeth Long, Laura Miller, Angus Phillips, Janice Radway, Jonathan Rose, Shafquat Towheed, Catherine Turner, Jay Satterfield, Clare Squires, Eva Hemmungs Wirtén. It is arranged into six sections which examine the internationalisation of publishing businesses, changing notions of authorship, innovation in the design and marketing of books, the specific effects of globalisation on creative property and the book in a multimedia marketplace.

Twentieth-century book history attracts an audience beyond the traditional disciplines of librarianship, bibliography, history and literary studies. It will appeal to publishing educators, editors, publishers, booksellers, as well as academics with an interest in media and popular culture.

Includes Marketing and Reading: Marx, Jane Eyre, Tarzan: miners' libraries in South Wales 1923–52 by Jonathan Rose