Cheap Repository Tracts
They were devised by Hannah More and intended for sale or distribution to literate poor people, as an alternative to what she regarded as the immoral traditional broadside ballad and chapbook publications.
The English religious writer and philanthropist Hannah More referred 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] Following the commercial success of her Village Politics (1792), which was a rebuttal of Thomas Paine's Rights of Man, she decided that an entire series might be undertaken to provide 'religious and useful knowledge, as an antidote to the poison continually flowing thro’ the channel of vulgar and licentious publications.
The new tracts were intended to point 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 instructive tales.
A few titles were condensed versions of existing well-known works, such as Isaac Watts's Divine Songs and Daniel Defoe's The History of the Plague in London in 1665, and retellings of Bible stories.
Under More's initial scheme the tracts were all to be printed by Samuel Hazard, of Cheap Street Bath and distributed by him and by John Marshall in London and by Richard White in Westminster.
The tracts were still selling well by December 1795, but there continued to be distribution problems, particularly in those parts of the United Kingdom further from London, notably Scotland and the north of England.
Hannah More also began to realise that the cost of producing simultaneous editions at two different centres in England was not sustainable in the long term, and she was hearing complaints about the low level of discounts offered to the hawkers who were expected to distribute many of the copies.
At the same time she was receiving requests from the wealthier supporters of the scheme for an edition printed on better quality paper in the more compact duodecimo format which might be bound into annual collected volumes.
[17] Marshall felt aggrieved by his treatment by Hannah More and as an experienced publisher of ballads and chapbooks he had no difficulty in securing further suitable texts to continue the series.
[19] The official body warned potential purchasers about the status of Marshall's tracts and surviving copies sometimes have the words 'Cheap Repository' obliterated from the title page.
In March 1795, Hannah More authorised the Association for the Discountenancing of Vice and Promoting the Knowledge and Practice of Religion and Virtue, in Dublin, (of which she was an honorary member) to reprint her tracts in Ireland.
[26] After the resignation of Marshall in December 1797, a further fifteen new titles in the official Cheap Repository Tracts series, written by Hannah More were printed by John Evans.
These were issued between December 1797 and October 1798, starting with The fall of Adam, which contained an announcement of the new publishing arrangements.”[27] The new series includes at least one tract, commenting on the Irish Rebellion of 1798, which does not later appear in Hannah More's collected works.
[34] A similar monthly series of twenty-nine ‘’Scotch Cheap Repository Tracts; containing Moral Tales for the Instruction of the Young,’’ were produced by ‘a Society of Clergymen in Dumfries-Shire’.
They were modelled on Hannah More's tracts but sought, ‘to adapt this captivating mode of instruction to the religious sentiments, as well as to the manner and habits, of the intelligent peasantry in the division of the United Kingdom’.
The period immediately following the Napoleonic Wars saw popular dissatisfaction in England culminating in the Spa Fields riots of December 1816 and an abortive attempt to take control of the government.
Hannah More therefore issued a number of entirely new, pro-establishment, titles during 1817 including The loyal subjects political creed; The Delegate; The Private Virtues of public Reformists; and Fair words and foul meaning.
The publication of the Cheap Repository Tracts has been represented by some political historians as a conservative reaction to the success enjoyed by Thomas Paine's The Rights of Man and Age of Reason.
Only a small proportion of the 1790s tracts were political in content; the majority attempted to reform the morals of the working classes, "adopting the forms, writing styles, and even distribution channels of popular literature".
This title was also satirized by William Thackeray in Vanity Fair who talks of Lady Emily Hornblower and her tracts including The washerwoman of Finchley Common.
