Oxford Handbook of the British Sermon 1689–1901. Edited by Keith A. Francis and William Gibson. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. xv + 630 pp. $157.00 hardcover.

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Oxford Handbook of the British Sermon 1689-1901 . Edited by Keith A. Francis and William Gibson . New York : Oxford University Press , 2013. xv + 630 pp. $157.00 hardcover.Book Reviews and NotesThe Oxford Handbook of the British Sermon 1689-1901 , edited by Keith A. Francis and William Gibson, aims to demonstrate the interdisciplinary strength of sermon studies. This discrete field has occurred over the past two decades, the work of historians, literary and linguistic scholars, theologians, and rhetoricians. Continuing the trend of studies in the field, the editors see this volume as being influenced by and contributing to a transformation of the landscape of sermon studies. Sermon studies, then, is an attempt to respond to the significance of religion in Britain during the period of 1689-1901, a "golden age" of sermons.The focus of the handbook's thirty-seven chapters is scholarly and research-oriented, written primarily for experts and students of religious, political and social life in the period. Focusing on the sermon rather than preaching provides a way of discerning trends represented by preachers and their aims as principle actors in the public sphere. Sermons are approached as "fossils," or works of paleontology; the study of artifacts whose real substance is gone and can only be partially recovered by unearthing the material remains that surround them, particularly publishing and architecture. The organizing principle of the essays guides their arrangement which follows the judgment of the editors, of which William Gibson provides a clear summary in the first chapter, "The British Sermon 1689-1901: Quantities, Performance, and Culture." The dates, 1689-1901, identify a time period bounded by the Glorious Revolution and the death of Queen Victoria, following the era of the "baroque" sermon and puritan preaching and prior to a period of decline. Popularity of sermons was at an all-time high, characterized by diversification in content and purpose even as preaching became more specialized. An additional factor is the quantity of extant sermons; approximately 80,000 of an estimated 250 million sermonic events. The introductory essays thus serve as an invitation for scholars of modern British history to include sermon studies in their work.Yet if a single cultural experience can be said to have been shared by all classes and conditions of people in Britain and throughout its empire is that of sitting below a pulpit hearing a sermon. The conversation and debates, other than in print, that they have engendered have been lost like most such experiences. In comparison with politics, economics, warfare, crime, and perhaps even sex, sermons probably occupied more of the attention of people (25-26).The chapters can be read as opening a number of possible paths into sermon studies. Following the editors' essays, parts II and III comprise twenty-one of the book's thirty-seven chapters, "Communities, Culture and Communication" and "Occasional Sermons," surveying the landscape of the sermon and its use. Part II treats parish preaching: the village sermon, Victorian era sermons, sermons as public lecture, Quaker sermons, evangelical sermons, sermons in British Catholicism, sermons in Scotland and Wales, and sermons for the UK annual Three Choirs Festival. …