Francis Edward Paget Biography

Francis Edward Paget is best known as one of the writers of Tractarian fiction, those children's and adult texts produced by members of the Oxford Movement that were intended to illustrate the doctrines of the Anglican High Church. Paget and William Gresley wrote novels during the 1830s and 1840s that were little more than thinly coated religious tracts against the perceived dangers of the growing secularization of the Church of England. Paget did not view himself primarily as a novelist, but as a minister using fictional polemics as a way to promote his religious beliefs; he alternated novels with the publication of sermon and prayer collections. With the novels of Paget and Gresley the High Church tradition of theological fiction became differentiated from its Evangelical counterpart. While Paget's writing is vastly superior to that of Gresley, his early Tractarian texts for children are marred by similar faults of heavy didacticism...
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