Reading Others Who Read: The Early-Century Print Environment of the Religious Tract Society

This paper explores the ways in which tracts and periodicals circulated by the Religious Tract Society worked in tandem to encourage a style of reading that emphasized the need for a reader to apply the moral of a narrative first and foremost to themselves. This style of reading did not prioritize sympathy. Instead it attenuated the possibility that the lower-class and imperially subjected readers addressed by the material might come to see themselves as part of a reading audience united by a shared print culture. At the same time, this style of reading helped preserve the reader's sense that there remained, in the bewildering flood of mass-media information, a possibility for reading to lead to undiluted ethical action.