Literature and religion are "old and dear companions . . . not always agreeing, to be sure," asserts the author. Drawing examples from a time of religious upheaval and transition, he examines such English-language masters as Blake, Wordsworth, Byron, Austen, Poe, Scott, Mill, Darwin, Dickens, Thackeray, the Brontës, Hawthorne, Eliot, Stevenson, and many others.