In the 19th century, an era that saw a reconfiguration of the relationship between the self, the world and the divine, women writers probed the theological depths of embodied faith in new ways through poetry, fiction, devotional prose and life writing. Elizabeth Ludlow explores how, through this process, they articulated what it means to pray, and thereby understand one’s place in a world of individual and communal bodies. The eight women writers discussed – Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Josephine Butler, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, Dora Greenwell, Felicia Hemans, Adelaide Procter and Christina Rossetti – provide accounts of prayer that stress that the only way to experience and respond to something of the transcendent is through embracing lived experience and through a recognition of the connectedness of all bodies. In detailing how these writers engage with new ways of thinking about faith, desire and the material world, Ludlow argues that they offer models for ethical modes of being in the world and pave the way for later theologies of embodiment. “This book makes an important and unprecedented contribution to our appreciation of the diverse ways in which nineteenth-century women writers stressed the need for embodied participation in the divine through prayer and living prayerfully.” ―Joshua King, Professor of English and Director of Environmental Humanities, Baylor University, USA “Ludlow's work challenges critical commonplaces which frame women writers' engagement with faith as an escape from the self, the body, and the pressing social and political concerns of their day. Instead, she demonstrates how these writers' explorations of Christian prayer as an embodied practice grounded them more fully in the world. This timely intervention in nineteenth-century studies is essential reading for scholars interested in rethinking and revaluing the relationship between the spiritual and the material in women's writing and thinking.” ― Dr Dinah Roe, Reader in Nineteenth-Century Literature, Oxford Brookes University Elizabeth Ludlow is Associate Professor of Literature and Religion at Anglia Ruskin University, UK Emma Mason is Professor of English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick, UK, and an editor of Bloombury's New Directions in Religion and Literature series. Mark Knight is Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Toronto, Canada. His books include Chesterton and Evil (2004), Biblical Religion and the Novel, 1700-2000 (co-edited with Thomas Woodman, 2006), Nineteenth-Century Religion and Literature: An Introduction (co-written with Emma Mason, OUP, 2006), An Introduction to Religion and Literature (2009) and Religion, Literature and the Imagination (co-edited with Louise Lee, 2009). Current projects include: a monograph entitled Good Words: Evangelicalism and the Victorian Novel ; a co-authored book (with Emma Mason) entitled Faithful Reading: Poetry and Christian Practice ; and a co-edited volume (with Jo Carruthers and Andrew Tate) entitled A Bible and Literature Reader . With Emma Mason, Mark Knight edits the book series New Directions in Religion and Literature for Bloomsbury Academic.