The Problem of Pleasure

The book combines intellectual, cultural and social history to address a major area of encounter between Christianity and British culture: the world of leisure. This book traces the rise and fall of the evangelical movement, the powerhouse of Victorian religion, via its preoccupation with pleasure. Victorian evangelicalism demonstrated an ability to excite the affections but also a corresponding suspicion of worldly pleasures. Suspicion developed into hostility, and a movement premised on freedo