Sara Coleridge and the Oxford Movement is the first book to be devoted entirely to Sara Coleridge's religious writings. It presents extracts from important religious works which have remained unpublished since the 1840s. These writings represent a bold intervention by a woman writer in the public spheres of academia and the Church, in the genre of religious writing which was a masculine preserve (as opposed to the genres of religious fiction and poetry). They offer the most original and systematic critique of Tractarian theology to appear in the 1840s. Sara Coleridge's assertion of religious inclusivity and liberty of conscience is based on a radically Protestant theology underpinned by a Kantian epistemology. The book also presents substantial extracts from her unpublished masterpiece Dialogues on Regeneration (the equivalent of her father's Opus Maximum) which show her remarkable literary originality and the continuing development of her innovative religious thought.

'Sara Coleridge and the Oxford Movement' presents Sara Coleridge's religious writings to modern readers for the first time. It includes extracts from her important religious works which have remained unpublished since the 1840s. These writings present a forthright and eloquent challenge to the patriarchal hegemonies of Victorian religion and society. They represent a bold intervention by a woman writer in the public spheres of academia and the Church, in the genre of religious writing which was a masculine preserve (as opposed to the genres of religious fiction and poetry). The religious writings published by Sara Coleridge in the 1840s present the most original and systematic critique of the Tractarian theology developed by John Henry Newman, Edward Pusey, John Keble and their colleagues. Sara Coleridge advances against a theology which she regards as repressive, authoritarian and conceptually flawed, a radical Protestant religion of inward experience and reason, underpinned by a Kantian epistemology. The passages reveal Sara Coleridge's concerns with the language of religious discourse, which drove her later developments in religious prose.

'Sara Coleridge and the Oxford Movement' also consists of passages selected from Sara Coleridge's unpublished masterpiece 'Dialogues on Regeneration' (the equivalent of her father's 'Opus Maximum'), written in the last two years of her life. This collection of Socratic dialogues is quite remarkable, the most original and innovative religious work of the Tractarian era. Sara Coleridge recognized that the form and language of religious discourse was an essential consideration in determining the character of religious culture. In the period from 1833 to 1850, the monologic forms of treatise, sermon, tract and essay had...