The Narrative of the Good Death: The Evangelical Deathbed in Victorian England

In The Narrative of the Good Death: The Evangelical Deathbed in Victorian England, Mary Riso's study of obituaries in evangelical Nonconformist magazines from 1830 to 1880, we encounter lists of the ways in which people have died: "being struck by a tree branch on a farm or a heavy stone at work, falling into a flour mill, breaking the skull while repairing machinery in an iron forge, [and] injury by a ballast wagon"; others left this life by "being thrown from a carriage" or from "a bruise on the arm that mortified," from "a cold caught while on a voyage," an attack "by an enraged bull," and being "run over by a train" (qtd. in Riso 106). Riso, a historian at Gordon College in Massachusetts, follows the rise in concerns about respectability-responsibility, generosity, sobriety, but also income and social status-as well as shifts in gender norms during these years. Whether or not writing style should matter in a serious history is an open question, but Riso's book falls repeatedly into list mode, with very short sections that care more about coverage than depth of analysis.