In 1833 Agnes Collinson Bulmer, the widow of a prosperous London merchant and a lifelong Methodist, published a twelve-book epic poem in heroic couplets entitled Messiah's Kingdom with Rivington, a noted publisher of religious books. Though Bulmer had published some of her poems in the Methodist Magazine and was best known for her Scripture Histories for children, she had never published a work on this scale. It took her nine years to complete, ran to over 14,000 lines, and remains one of the great unstudied poems of the nineteenth century in that it deals in a unique and substantial way with the epic changes taking place in British life and culture (Catholic emancipation, the Reform Act, an expanding empire) from the perspective of a Methodist women who conceives of a redemptive role for Britain and Methodism in the world. Aside from its value as a piece of literature, however, its theological scope is tremendous, beginning with the fall and proceeding through the major events of the Old and New Testaments, the establishment of the Church, the Reformation, the formation of the British empire, and the evangelical fight against slavery. As Bulmer expressed it, the main purpose of the work was to narrate the ‘development [sic] of the great scheme of human salvation, through a Divine Incarnate Redeemer’. Its theme is the establishment of Christ’s kingdom on earth, first through his redemptive work on the cross and then through the actions of the individual Christian in society. Bulmer takes the created order as her primary example of God's goodness to humankind and then works upward, by analogy, to His purpose for creation. Its theology is distinctly Wesleyan, focusing on Christ's love for individuals and the world, the individual's ability to respond to God's freely extended grace, and her subsequent responsibility to live out this faith in the world.