Silent Preachers in the Age of Ingenuity: Faith, Commerce, and Religious Tracts in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain

Abstract

“Why should not system be opposed to system, brevity to brevity, cheapness to cheapness, entertainment to entertainment, and perseverance to perseverance? Thus alone can the enemy be met in his marches and his countermarches, and thus a reasonable hope may be indulged of baffling his schemes.”–Annual Report of the Religious Tract Society, 1808 On the Thursday morning of August 23, 1821, the executive committee members of the Religious Tract Society (RTS) gathered for a special meeting. Spread before them were specimens of irreligious street literature sold by their competitors. Balefully, they eyed a “good number of the low, mischievous, and disgusting publications now on the table.” The committee was in fact already intimately familiar with these types of publications, but their review of them inspired the RTS to redouble their efforts “to publish tracts with the express purpose of meeting and suppressing the lowest class of books now circulating.” To this end, they deemed it “expedient to descend the scale which the society's publications have hitherto maintained, in order to meet the evil so much complained of.” Furthermore, the committee resolved to focus their attention on discovering “the best means” for putting their new, lowbrow tracts into “extensive circulation.”