![]() The Depository of the Religious Tract Society at 56 Paternoster Row, opened in 1844. [1] | |
Merged into | 1935 |
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Successor | United Society for Christian Literature |
Founded | 1799 |
Location |
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The Religious Tract Society was a British evangelical Christian organization founded in 1799 and known for publishing a variety of popular religious and quasi-religious texts in the 19th century. The society engaged in charity as well as commercial enterprise, publishing books and periodicals for profit.
Periodicals published by the RTS included Boy's Own Paper , Girl's Own Paper and The Leisure Hour . In 1935, it merged into what is today the United Society for Christian Literature.
The idea for the society came from the Congregationalist minister George Burder, who raised the idea while meeting with the London Missionary Society (founded in 1795) in May 1799. It was formally established on 10 May 1799, having a treasurer, a secretary, and ten committee members, [2] with members required to "[subscribe] half a guinea or upwards annually". [3] Its initial membership was drawn from the London Missionary Society, and included:
At its formation, the society had support from bishops, including Shute Barrington (Durham) and Beilby Porteus (London). [8]
Founders of the RTS would go on to found the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1804.
Initially, the society's only stated goal was the production and distribution across Britain of religious tracts—short pamphlets explaining the principles of the Christian religion, with the aim of spreading salvation to the masses. [9]
The society was interdenominational, including members belonging to most branches of Protestantism in Britain (such as Congregationalists, Baptists, and Quakers), as well as the established churches of England and Scotland; however, it excluded Roman Catholics and Unitarians. [10]
For the first 25 years of the society's existence, its main activity was the publication and distribution of religious tracts. The first RTS tract was David Bogue's An Address to Christians, Recommending the Distribution of Cheap Religious Tracts, which listed seven recommendations for writing effective religious tracts, including that they be "plain", "striking", "entertaining", and "adapted to various situations and conditions" of its audience. [11] [12] These principles would tracts written in the following century. [11]
In its first year, the society had a catalogue of 34 distinct tracts, and printed 200,000 copies. Its output increased over the years, and by 1820 its catalogue included 279 tracts, and it was printing more than 5 million annually. [13]
From 1814, the society began publishing some tracts specifically for children. [14]
In the 1820s and 1830s, the society began commercially publishing bound books and periodicals for adults and children, shifting away from its previous focus on tracts, and leading to a sharp increase in the society's income. This shift was the subject of some criticism both within and outside the organization. Subscribers to the society raised concerns that their contributions were being used to subsidize books which were aimed at a middle-class audience and priced out of reach of the working-class families that represented the previous targets of the society's evangelical efforts. [15] In 1825, the society formally separated the accounting for its charitable and commercial work into what they termed a "Benevolent Fund" and "Trade Fund" in order to give greater transparency around how subscription funds were used. Beginning in 1835, the Trade Fund became entirely self-sufficient, with some profits from commercial publishing flowing into the Benevolent Fund. [16]
By the 1840s, the RTS had become a sizeable publishing house, with more than 60 employees and a catalogue of more than 4,000 works in 110 languages. [16]
The earliest periodicals published by the society were Child's Companion; or, Sunday scholar's reward and Tract Magazine; or Christian Miscellany. Both debuted in 1824, and were issued monthly at a price of 1 penny, the former aimed at Sunday school students, and the latter at their parents. [17] They had monthly sales of 28,250 and 17,000, respectively. [18]
The society's books were mostly small but did include larger works such as the multi-volume Devotional Commentary and the massive Analytical Concordance to the Bible of Robert Young.
In the 1840s, the society distributed 23 million books to working class households. [19]
From the 1860s, the Society began publishing novels aimed at women and children, providing a platform for a new generation of women writers, including Rosa Nouchette Carey. [20]
The society also published the notable novel, Pilgrim's Progress, by John Bunyan. They reproduced Pilgrim's Progress, in many formats including; penny parts, Sunday School prize additions, and cheap abridgments. [21]
Income from the sale of the society's books and periodicals went into a decline in the 1890s. A report issued by the society attributed this to a "general depression [which] has severely affected the book trade", though no such depression existed. Historian Aileen Fyfe attributes the decline to an increase in competition, and a decline in the influence of Christian evangelism and in the demand for religious literature. [22] As the society entered the 20th century, its operations contracted. It reduced the funding it provided for foreign missionary work, and in 1930 reorganized all its operations into a single building. In the inter-war period, tract circulation had declined to one million, its lowest level since 1806. [23]
In 1932, a new imprint, Lutterworth Press, was formed, under which most of the society's subsequent publications appeared. [24]
In 1935, the society merged with the Christian Literature Society for India and Africa, later also incorporating the Christian Literature Society for China in 1941. The resulting entity was the United Society for Christian Literature, which, as of 2006, was continuing its mission, largely in the form of overseas missionary work. [24]
The R.T.S. issued a number of book series during the 19th and 20th centuries. Many of them were listed in the Society's catalogues. [25] [26]
Edward Bouverie Pusey was an English Anglican cleric, for more than fifty years Regius Professor of Hebrew at the University of Oxford. He was one of the leading figures in the Oxford Movement, with interest in sacramental theology and typology.
David Bogue was a British nonconformist religious leader.
Andrew Fuller was an English Particular Baptist minister and theologian. Known as a promoter of missionary work, he also took part in theological controversy.
Joseph Milner (1744–1797), an English evangelical divine, has a reputation particularly for his work on The History of the Church of Christ (1794–1809).
Charlotte Maria Tucker was a prolific English writer and poet for children and adults, who wrote under the pseudonym A.L.O.E.. Late in life she spent a period as a volunteer missionary in India, where she died.
The Lutterworth Press, one of the oldest independent British publishing houses, has traded since the late eighteenth century - initially as the Religious Tract Society (RTS). The Lutterworth imprint, named after the small English town of Lutterworth in Leicestershire, where John Wyclif served as Rector in the fourteenth century, has been used since 1932, and Lutterworth continued most of the then current RTS publications. The main areas have been religion, children's books and general adult non-fiction.
John Udall was an English clergyman of Puritan views, closely associated with the publication of the Martin Marprelate tracts, and prosecuted for controversial works of a similar polemical nature. He has been called "one of the most fluent and learned of puritan controversialists".
The Tracts for the Times were a series of 90 theological publications, varying in length from a few pages to book-length, produced by members of the English Oxford Movement, an Anglo-Catholic revival group, from 1833 to 1841. There were about a dozen authors, including Oxford Movement leaders John Keble, John Henry Newman and Edward Bouverie Pusey, with Newman taking the initiative in the series, and making the largest contribution. With the wide distribution associated with the tract form, and a price in pennies, the Tracts succeeded in drawing attention to the views of the Oxford Movement on points of doctrine, but also to its overall approach, to the extent that Tractarian became a synonym for supporter of the movement.
During the early part of the 17th century, and persisting in some form into the early 18th century, there were a number of proposals for an English Academy: some form of learned institution, conceived as having royal backing and a leading role in the intellectual life of the nation. Definite calls for an English Academy came in 1617, based on the Italian model dating back to the 16th century; they were followed up later, after the 1635 founding of the French Académie, by John Dryden (1664), John Evelyn (1665), and Daniel Defoe (1697).
The Library of Entertaining Knowledge was founded by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. The books appeared from 1829 to 1838, published in London by Charles Knight, and complemented the Society's Library of Useful Knowledge, which had not sold as well as hoped. The volumes were priced at 4s. 6d, more expensive than rival non-fiction series.
Eastman's Royal Naval Academy, originally in Southsea and later at Winchester, both in England, was a preparatory school. Between 1855 and 1923 it was known primarily as a school that prepared boys for entry to the Royal Navy. Thereafter, it was renamed Eastman's Preparatory School and continued until the 1940s. According to Jonathan Betts, it was "considered one of the top schools for boys intended for the Navy".
Margery Baxter was an outspoken and heretical Lollard from Martham, England. She was brought to trial twice and flogged at church.
Edward William Grinfield (1785–1864) was an English biblical scholar.
Charles Maurice Davies (1828–1910) was an Anglican clergyman, writer and spiritualist.
William Jones (1762–1846) was a Welsh bookseller, religious writer, and member of the Scotch Baptist church in Finsbury, London.
Samuel Walker (1714–1761), called Samuel Walker of Truro, was an English evangelical clergyman of the Church of England.
William Bengo' Collyer (1782–1854) was an English Congregational minister and religious writer,
Ethel Louise Nokes (1883–1976) was a British children's writer who produced 21 novels from the 1930s to the 1950s – several with equestrian themes, plus a trilogy of girls' school stories. Many of her works have evangelical sub-texts.
Sunday at Home was a weekly magazine published in London by the Religious Tract Society beginning in 1854. It was one of the most successful examples of the "Sunday reading" genre of periodicals: inexpensive magazines intended to provide wholesome religious entertainment for families to read on Sundays, especially as a substitute for "pernicious" secular penny weeklies such as The London Journal or The Family Herald.