ABSTRACT
Hesba Stretton’s mission reaches out beyond the concerns of her homeland. Towards the end of her career, her interest in the outcast was channelled into an absorbing project which centres on the trials of a community suffering oppression in a region far beyond her native shore; the association which underlies this project might be termed the ‘Russian Connection’. During the 1890s, she published texts which revolve around the persecution, imprisonment and exile, by the Orthodox Authorities, of the dissident Stundists – an evangelical sect with western Baptist connections (Senese, 1987: 55), who rejected iconolatry and ritual. Stretton weaves fictional narratives around actual events and persons, interfusing religious themes, romance and social critique. Although these texts have escaped serious critical scrutiny, they are, in common with her other writings, morally complex and politically engaged.
