Cheap Repository Tracts

The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain, one of the most popular tracts

The Cheap Repository Tracts was a series of around 120 political and religious tracts published between March 1795 and December 1797, for sale or distribution to literate poor people, as an alternative to the ‘corrupt and vicious little books and ballads which have been hung out of windows in the most alluring forms or hawked through town and country.’^[1] A scheme for their production and distribution was drawn up by Hannah More .The tracts pointed out the pitfalls of drunkenness, debauchery, idleness, gambling, riotous assembly, and seeking to rise above one’s station, whilst simultaneously praising the virtues of honesty, industry, thrift, patience and an acceptance of one’s pre-ordained place in society, by means of simple ballads and short stories. Approximately one third of them are designated as ‘Sunday Reading’ and containing simplified Bible stories or else a more specifically religious message. They were published as either 12 or 24 page chapbooks or else broadside ballads, and emulated traditional forms of Street literature. They were extremely successful and it has been estimated that 2,000,000 were sold each year.^[2]

Background

Following the success of Hannah More's Village Politics (1792), a rebuttal of Thomas Paine's Rights of Man, she decided that an entire series could be undertaken. Only a small proportion of the tracts were political in content; they were more rather an attempt to reform the morals of the working classes, “adopting the forms, writing styles, and even distribution channels of popular literature.”^[3]

More, drew up her scheme for publishing such works in the West Country during 1794 and circulated among her friends who encouraged her to extend it to cover the whole country and appoint a London distributor. She began to secure subscriptions to underwrite the project and an informal committee was formed with Henry Thornton as Treasurer and a printed prospectus issued. ^[4]

Publication

Publication commenced in March 1795; ‘there had never been anything like it in the history of English books. In the first six weeks (March 3 – April 18, 1795) 300,000 copies were sold at wholesale; by July of the same year, the number had more than doubled; and by March , 1796, the total number had reached the staggering figure of 2,000,000. ^[5] According to the ‘Advertisement’ prefacing one of the collected editions of the tracts: Many persons exerted their influence, not only by circulating the tracts in their own families, in schools, and among their dependants, but also by encouraging booksellers to supply themselves with them; by inspecting retailers and hawkers, to whom they gave a few in the first instance, and afterwards directed them in the purchase; also by recommending the tracts to the occupiers of stalls at fairs, and by sending them to hospitals, workhouses, and prisons. They were also liberally distributed among soldiers and sailors, through the influence of their commanders.^[6]

Under More’s original scheme, the tracts were printed and sold by Samuel Hazard, a printer of Bath, with John Marshall (publisher) as the principal London stockist together with Richard White a bookseller in Westminster. By April 1795 Marshall and Hazard were unable to cope with the extraordinary demand for the tracts. Marshall and Hazard shared the printing, and in Dublin, William Watson, the 'Printer of the Association for Discountenancing Vice and Promoting the Knowledge and Practice of Religion and Virtue,’ was also appointed ‘Printer to the Cheap Repository’ and permitted to reprint the titles.^[7] Early in 1796 printing in two centres was found to be uneconomic, and so Marshall, who had the larger business, became the printer and Hazard was demoted to become a distributor.^[8] At the same time John Elder, an Edinburgh bookseller, was appointed to assist with the distribution in ‘the distant counties’. Individual tracts were also taken to America and reprinted there.^[9] The tracts proved to be popular with the middle classes and gentry, and collected volumes were issued at the end of each year.

Authorship

More than one half were written by Hannah More who designed the scheme, others were written by her sisters and her friends.^[10] A further six were perhaps written by her sister Sarah, others by evangelical friends such as the poet William Mason^{[disambiguation needed ]}, the philanthropists and campaigners against slavery Zachary Macaulay, John Newton, and Henry Thornton, or William Gilpin, the artist and writer on the picturesque. A few titles were condensed versions of existing well-known works, such as Isaac Watts’, Divine Songs or Daniel Defoe’s The History of the Plague in London in 1665, or else retellings of Bible stories.^[11] The scheme was subsidised by subscriptions from supporters enabling the publications to be sold at below cost prize.

The end of the scheme and Marshall’s continuation

’’The contented cobler’’ (1798) one of John Marshall’s series of tracts.

Hannah More decided to end the official series of tracts with those for December 1797. This may have been due to a disagreement with Marshall, or because the strain of the work involved was ‘affecting Hannah More’s fragile health’, as she was ‘often driven to the necessity of furnishing three titles myself.’^[12] She also appointed another man, John Evans, ‘Printer to the Cheap Repository,’ and although he only ever printed eleven new titles after 1797, he continued to reprint the existing titles, which were still selling well.

John Marshall, who had devoted his business to the production and distribution of the tracts and owned the woodcuts, threatened to sue. It would be a further year before negotiations were completed and the original woodcuts handed over to the new publishers. Marshall then decided to issue his own series of 73 Cheap Repository Tracts over the next two years, finishing in December 1799. These looked very similar to the originals and have often been confused with them. Marshall’s tracts were publicly disowned by the original committee in newspaper advertisements.

The collected volumes of the original series of Cheap Repository Tracts were reprinted until the 1830s and individual tracts until the 1840s.

Notes

1. ^ Cheap Repository (1795)
2. ^ "More, Hannah." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved on 8 June 2007.
3. ^ Pedersen (1986), p.88.
4. ^ Cheap Repository (1795)
5. ^ Altick, (1957), p. 75.
6. ^ Cheap repository shorter tracts, (1798).
7. ^ Mary Pollard, Dictionary of members of the Dublin book trade 1550-1800, London: Bibliographical Society, 2000, pp.595-6.
8. ^ Stott, (2003), p. 176.
9. ^ Weiss (1946).
10. ^ G. H. Spinney, (1939–40), pp. 295–340.
11. ^ Jones, (1952), p.138.
12. ^ Stott, (2003), p. 205.

Resources

• Altick, Richard D. ‘’The English common reader’’ University of Chicago Press, 1957,
• ‘’Cheap Repository for Moral and Religious Publications’’, [a prospectus] : London: J. Marshall, [1795?]. ESTC T030543.
• Cheap repository shorter tracts, (F. and C. Rivington, 1798), ESTC T030544.
• Jones, Mary G. ‘’Hannah More’’, (Cambridge University Press, 1952)
• Kelly, Gary. "Revolution, Reaction, and the Expropriation of Popular Culture: Hannah More's Cheap Repository." Man and Nature 6 (1987): 147-59.
• Myers, Mitzi. "Hannah More's Tracts for the Times: Social Fiction and Female Ideology." Fetter'd or Free? British Women Novelists, 1670-1815. Eds. Mary Anne Schofield and Cecilia Macheski. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1986.
• Pedersen, Susan, ‘Hannah More Meets Simple Simon: Tracts, Chapbooks, and Popular Culture in Late Eighteenth-Century England,’ The Journal of British Studies, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Jan., 1986), pp. 84-113.
• Scheuerman, Mona. In Praise of Poverty: Hannah More Counters Thomas Paine and the Radical Threat. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2002.
• Spinney, G. H. 'Cheap Repository Tracts; Hazard and Marshall edition,' The Library, Vol. 20, 4th Series, (1939–40), pp. 295–340.
• Stott, Anne, Hannah More the first Victorian, (Oxford: O.U.P., 2003),
• Vallone, Lynne. "'A humble Spirit under Correction': Tracts, Hymns, and the Ideology of Evangelical Fiction for Children, 1780-1820." The Lion and the Unicorn 15 (1991) 72-95.
• Weiss, Harry B. "Hannah More’s Cheap Repository Tracts in America," Bulletin of the New York Public Library 50.7 (1946), and 50.8 (1946).