This is the second of a projected three-volume history of Nonconformity in England and Wales. Following the widely-acclaimed first volume, which covered the period from Reformation to the French Revolution, this second volume deals with the years from 1791 to 1859. It was a period in which Evangelical Nonconformity underwent phenomenal growth and had a profound impact on nearly all aspects of English and Welsh society and on its economic and political life. The history of late Georgian and Victorian England and Wales, argues Dr Watts, cannot be understood without a knowledge of Nonconformity.

Religious dissent has been a persistent feature of English and Welsh history for over four hundred years, influencing the economic, cultural, and political history of the two nations as well as their religious life. The Dissenters is the first of a projected three-volume study on the subject, which promises to be the first comprehensive overview of the subject in more than sixty years.

This third and final volume of Michael Watts's study of dissent examines the turbulent times of Victorian Nonconformity, a period of faith and of doubt. Watts assesses the impacts of the major Dissenting preachers and provides insights into the various movements, such as romanticism and the higher, often German, biblical criticism. He shows that the preaching of hell and eternal damnation was more effective in recruiting to the chapels than the gentler interpretations. A major feature of the volume is a thorough analysis of surviving records of attendance at Nonconformist services. He provides fascinating accounts of Spurgeon and the other key figures of Nonconformity, including of the Salvation Army. Dr Watts also provides a fresh discussion of the contribution which Nonconformity made to the politics of mid- to late-Victorian Britain. He examines such issues of reform as Forster's Education Act of 1871, temperance, and Balfour's Education Act of 1902, and considers Nonconformist interventions in such controversies as the Bulgarian Agitation, Home Rule for Ireland, the Armenian massacres of the mid 1890s, and the Boer War. The volume concludes with the Liberal landslide in the 1906 general election, which saw probably more Nonconformists elected than any time since the era of Oliver Cromwell.