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 (or religiously inspired) 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.[3]
It was initially edited by James Macaulay, and later by W. Stevens.[4] Macaulay and Stevens also edited The Leisure Hour, a similar periodical which debuted two years earlier and was also published by the Religious Tract Society, though Sunday at Home was more overtly religious and had a more strongly Sabbatarian viewpoint.[4] Like The Leisure Hour, a typical issue of Sunday at Home led with a serialized piece of religious fiction, and included at least one large illustration.[4]
In addition to the penny weekly format, the magazine was issued in monthly parts at a price of five pence[4] (raised to 6p in 1863), and annual volumes ranging in price from around 5 to 10 shillings.[3]
An example of a page with colour illustrations from an 1883 issue. The text of the Bible verse John 11:25 is illuminated with lilies and other decoration.
In 1862, the magazine began including colour illustrations, apparently the first penny weekly to do so.[3]
In 1865, the magazine had an annual circulation of 130,000 copies, which increased steadily up to 1875.[2]
Citations
↑ Fyfe, Aileen (2006). "A short history of the Religious Tract Society"(PDF). From the Dairyman's Daughter to Worrals of the WAAF: the Religious Tract Society, Lutterworth Press and Children's Literature. Cambridge: Lutterworth Press.
1 2 3 4 Olsen, Stephanie (2014). Juvenile Nation: Youth, Emotions and the Making of the Modern British Citizen, 1880–1914. A&C Black. pp.22–25. ISBN9781472511416.
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Penny dreadfuls were cheap popular serial literature produced during the 19th century in the United Kingdom. The pejorative term is roughly interchangeable with penny horrible, penny awful, and penny blood. The term typically referred to a story published in weekly parts of 8 to 16 pages, each costing one penny. The subject matter of these stories was typically sensational, focusing on the exploits of detectives, criminals, or supernatural entities. First published in the 1830s, penny dreadfuls featured characters such as Sweeney Todd, Dick Turpin, Varney the Vampire, and Spring-heeled Jack.
The Penny Magazine was an illustrated British magazine aimed at the working class, published every Saturday from 31 March 1832 to 31 October 1845. Charles Knight created it for the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in response to Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, which started two months earlier. Sold for only a penny and illustrated with wood-engravings, it was an expensive enterprise that could only be supported by very large circulation. Though initially very successful—with a circulation of 200,000 in the first year—it proved too dry and too Whiggish to appeal to the working-class audience it needed to be financially viable. Its competitor—which included a weekly short story—grew more slowly, but lasted much longer.
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.
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Sunday reading was a genre of periodical popular in Victorian Britain which offered light Christian reading thought to be suitable for families to read at home on Sundays. Typical examples such as Sunday at Home, The Quiver, and Leisure Hour featured a mixture of fiction, non-fiction, and verse, all dealing in some way with Christian themes.
The Sunday Magazine was a London magazine published by Alexander Strahan from 1864 until 1905. It belonged to the genre of "Sunday reading" periodicals, intended to provide religiously-inspired entertainment for families to read on Sundays. It contained a mixture of non-fiction, verse, short stories, and serialized novels, as well as featuring black and white woodcut illustrations by artists such as Robert Barnes, Edward Hughes, and George Pinwell.
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