industrialised conversion:

The Religious Tract Society and popular science publishing in Victorian Britain

Aileen completed her Ph.D. thesis at the University of Cambridge in 2000. It focused on the scientific publications of the Religious Tract Society in the 1840s and 1850s (for a brief history of the RTS, see below). The whole thesis can be ordered through inter-library loans in the usual way, but a text-only version is available here (it is missing all tables, graphs and other illustrations). With the exception of the abstract, these links will all take you to PDF documents. 

• Abstract of the thesis

• Introduction

• Chapter I: The Religious Tract Society

  • Early History
    • Origins: 1799-1820
    • Reorganisation: the 1820s and 1830s
    • Respectability: the 1840s and 1850s
  • Relations with the Trade
    • Organisation
    • The Society as part of the trade
    • Commerce versus philanthropy

• Chapter II: Producing Secular Christianity

  • Original and Scriptural
  • Popular, Portable and Economical
  • Dealing with writers
  • Reaching readers

• Chapter III: Managing Truth

  • Dealing with God and Nature
  • Varieties of Fish
  • How the readers of British Fish were caught

• Chapter IV: Writing for Christ

  • The RTS Writers
  • Deciding to write
  • Choosing what to write
  • The practices of writing
  • Literature and the domestic economy

• Conclusions

A Brief History of the Religious Tract Society

The Religious Tract Society was founded in London in 1799. It was intended to be an evangelical, non-denominational society dedicated to printing and distributing tracts. These tracts were to be 'silent messengers' among the working classes, urging them to consider the sinfulness of their ways and to accept the sacrifice made by Christ on the cross as the only way to salvation.

The Society started out in a very small way, but it survived, grew and prospered. It soon went beyond the plans of its founders, by supplying tracts in foreign languages for the use of overseas missionaries, and by producing small books for children. By the late 1820s, it was a publisher of religious periodicals, children's books, and collected sermons as well as tracts, and its publications were circulated in Great Britain and overseas. Sister organisations were founded all over the world.

In the 1840s, the Society began to publish another sort of work. Until that point, all its publications had been on theological matters, but the new series dealt with subjects like history, biography, the sciences and geography - doing so in a Christian manner. The RTS thus entered the 'popular science' market, and it is the aim of my thesis to ask why and how it did so, and what impact this had on the Society itself as well as the wider publishing trade.

 

Up till now, the Society has not been seriously studied, except by historians of children's literature (because of their significant contribution to late nineteenth-century children's publishing, including the Boy's Own Paper, the Girl's Own Paper, and numerous books by Hesba Stretton, GA Henty and others).

The RTS merged with other Christian literature societies in 1935, forming the United Society for Christian Literature. The USCL later sold its publishing wing, which exists today as the Lutterworth Press. USCL do most of their work through the Feed the Minds organisation. Both organisations are celebrating the bicentenary of the RTS in 1999, with a service and reception in London on May 10th; a touring exhibition; and a conference organised by the Children's Book History Society in Norwich, July 29th to August 1st 1999.

Those interested in researching the RTS further should note that the archives are held at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London.

• Disclaimer
• Privacy
• Copyright
• Accessibility