ABSTRACT
Obituaries are not a modern phenomenon. They have long been a literary vehicle for providing insight into a particular life journey. In the contemporary world, obituaries are most often brief sketches containing only factual details such as dates of birth, marriage and surviving family members. They provide little of what made the individual distinct. But that has not always been the case. In mid-Victorian England, religious obituaries often provided a glimpse into what mattered most to the deceased. This was certainly true in the obituaries found in the Nonconformist denominational magazines.
