Mary Riso is Program Coordinator for the Division of Education at Gordon College in Wenham, Massachusetts. She received her B.A. in Philosophy from Georgetown University, her M.Div. and Th.M. from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and her PhD in History from the University of Stirling. Dr. Riso has worked in both scholarly publishing and academic administration. She is the author of Heroines: The Lives of Great Literary Characters and What They Have to Teach Us (Baker), which focuses on heroines from classic nineteenth-century literature.

• Preface; 1. The cultural landscape of evangelical nonconformist death; 2. Obituaries as literature: form and content; 3. Evangelical nonconformist theology and deathbed piety; 4. The claims of heaven and earth: social background and social mobility; 5. The old dissent and the new dissent: denominational variations; 6. The infinite in the finite: the romantic spirit and nonconformist death; 7. Last words: the experience of death; 8. The good death and a good life; Appendices

’Evangelical Nonconformists of the Victorian age recorded the deaths of many of their number in the monthly issues of their denominational magazines. Mary Riso has analysed these obituaries with penetration, showing sensitivity to their conventional ways of writing about deathbeds and an awareness of the changing cultural setting of attitudes to mortality. The result is a collective profile that lays bare the strongly felt priorities of these Christian groups when confronting the last enemy.’ David Bebbington, University of Stirling, UK ’Mary Riso's carefully researched book makes a significant contribution to understanding the place of Protestant Nonconformity in English society. Her work is especially helpful for showing how much Nonconformist obituaries (a flourishing genre) partook of conventional middle-class values, yet also transcended them; how much the various denominations resembled each other, yet with crucial differences; and how much Romantic currents affected Nonconformists in some ways but not in others. It is a fine book.’ Mark Noll, University of Notre Dame, USA