This detailed, wide-ranging book points the way to new avenues of research into the local history of women and religion. It focuses on the early nineteenth-century Evangelical movement, and is based on many previously untapped, significant primary sources which the author places in contemporary religious, social, political and literary contexts, both national and local.

The lives of women from different religious and social backgrounds are explored through letters, parish records, hymns, poems and numerous other documents. Negative as well as positive responses to the movement are highlighted. This study provides ample evidence to show that, in local Evangelical communities, whether Anglican or Nonconformist, the roles of women were vital, yet limited and gender-specific. Connection between the two named counties is made through extant correspondence from a Canterbury woman to the Archdeacon of Northampton's wife.

Glorious Hope is a book of many facets. Through her exploration of a multitude of documents, Sibyl Phillips brings several early nineteenth-century women to life in their own domestic, social and religious contexts. The publication is fully referenced (footnotes at the bottom of each page), with an extensive bibliography and index.

This book is of interest to theologians, historians of religion and other academics, as well as to family historians, genealogists and local history societies. The author  has produced a multi-layered work which is accessible at many levels. However, the book never loses sight of its true focus - the women, how Evangelicalism adversely or positively affected their personal lives, and how gender and social status influenced their roles in the Evangelical movement at parish level.

Glorious Hope now has an overseas as well as a UK readership. It has been favourably reviewed in the Church Times, The Local Historian, and Cylchgrawn Hanes, the Journal of the Historical Society of the Presbyterian Church of Wales.

The book includes chapters on:

- An Anglican woman living in Canterbury, her comments on the local clergy, churches, society and rise of Nonconformity;

- The Bosworth Family and the Evangelical Rev. Thomas Jones of Creaton;

- Women's Evangelical activism in Creaton and Spratton, including the Church Missionary Society and Bible Ladies working for the British and Foreign Bible Society;

- A young female hymn-writer and the Particular Baptists at Hackleton, Northants, including William Carey and the Baptist Missionary Society.

To obtain your copy of Glorious Hope, please visit our Order Page.

More About the Author

Articles written by Sibyl Phillips have appeared in various journals and periodicals. Also, she has contributed a paper entitled: `John Newton (1725-1807): from infidel to Olney hymn-writer` for the 2007 Conference of the Hymn Society of Great Britain and Ireland.