Muscular Christianity was an important religious, literary, and social movement of the mid-nineteenth century. This volume draws on recent developments in cultural and gender theory to reveal close links between the ideology of the movement and the work of novelists and essayists, including Kingsley, Emerson, Dickens and Pater. Throughout this book, which also contributes to the critical debate on the body as a site for socio-political conflict, Muscular Christianity is shown to be at the heart of issues of gender, class, and national identity in the Victorian age.