Sunday reading was a genre of periodical popular in

Victorian Britain In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria's reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. The era followed the Georgian period and preceded the Edwardia ...

which offered light Christian reading thought to be suitable for families to read at home on

Sundays The Sundays were an English alternative rock band, formed in the late 1980s, which released three albums throughout the 1990s. The band's beginnings came with the meeting of singer Harriet Wheeler and guitarist David Gavurin while attending ...

. Typical examples such as '' Sunday at Home'', ''

The Quiver ''The Quiver'' (18611956) was a weekly magazine published by Cassell's and was "designed for the defence and promotion of biblical truth and the advance of religion in the homes of the people." History John Cassell (18171865), the English publ ...

'', and ''

Leisure Hour ''The Leisure Hour'' was a British general-interest periodical of the Victorian era which ran weekly from 1852 to 1905. It was the most successful of several popular magazines published by the Religious Tract Society, which produced Christian lite ...

'' featured a mixture of fiction, non-fiction, and verse, all dealing in some way with Christian themes. The genre was partly a reaction to the rise of cheaply available secular publications, which some observers considered to be morally insidious. It declined around the beginning of the 20th century as social taboos around consuming secular entertainment on the

Sabbath In Abrahamic religions, the Sabbath () or Shabbat (from Hebrew ) is a day set aside for rest and worship. According to the Book of Exodus, the Sabbath is a day of rest on the seventh day, commanded by God to be kept as a holy day of rest, as G ...

weakened.

Content

Sunday reading magazines contained a mixture of fiction, non-fiction, and verse, though contributions generally all featured an overtly Christian perspective. Fiction, which included short stories and

serialized novel In literature, a serial is a printing or publishing format by which a single larger work, often a work of narrative fiction, is published in smaller, sequential instalments. The instalments are also known as ''numbers'', ''parts'' or ''fascicle ...

s such as '' Jessica's First Prayer'' (serialised in 1866 in ''Sunday at Home''), typically carried clear moral lessons. Editors justified the inclusion of fiction by comparison with the

parables of Jesus The parables of Jesus are found in the Synoptic Gospels and some of the non-canonical gospels. They form approximately one third of his recorded teachings. Christians place great emphasis on these parables, which they generally regard as the word ...

. Toward the end of the 19th century, publications became increasingly willing to feature sensational secular fiction. For example, by the 1890s, ''

'' was publishing stories by authors like

Baroness Orczy Baroness Emma Orczy (full name: Emma Magdolna Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála Orczy de Orci) (; 23 September 1865 – 12 November 1947), usually known as Baroness Orczy (the name under which she was published) or to her family and friends as Em ...

and H. Rider Haggard.

Audience

Rather than aiming to proselytize to the masses, Sunday periodicals were largely intended to provide suitable Sunday entertainment for families which were already devoutly Christian. Victorian society was known for its sobre attitude toward the Sabbath. For example, the illustrator

Ernest Shepard Ernest Howard Shepard OBE Military Cross, MC (10 December 1879 – 24 March 1976) was an English artist and book illustrator. He is known especially for illustrations of the Anthropomorphism, anthropomorphic animal and soft toy characters in ''Th ...

recalled that as a child he and his brother were prevented from playing with toys, and that their reading options were limited to religious Sunday periodicals: "No old ''

Punch Punch commonly refers to: * Punch (combat), a strike made using the hand closed into a fist * Punch (drink), a wide assortment of drinks, non-alcoholic or alcoholic, generally containing fruit or fruit juice Punch may also refer to: Places * Pun ...

'' or ''

Illustrated London News ''The Illustrated London News'' appeared first on Saturday 14 May 1842, as the world's first illustrated weekly news magazine. Founded by Herbert Ingram, it appeared weekly until 1971, then less frequently thereafter, and ceased publication in ...

'' volumes to look at: instead ''The Sunday Magazine'', ''

'', and ''Sunday at Home''..." Sunday reading periodicals competed with, and were partly a reaction to, a variety of inexpensive secular periodicals which began to appear in the 1840s, such as ''

The London Journal ''The London Journal; and Weekly Record of Literature, Science and Art'' (published from 1845 to 1928) was a British penny dreadful, penny fiction weekly, one of the best-selling magazines of the nineteenth century. It was established by George ...

'', '' The Family Herald'', '' Lloyd's Weekly'', and '' Reynold's Miscellany''. These were typically priced at a single

penny A penny is a coin ( pennies) or a unit of currency (pl. pence) in various countries. Borrowed from the Carolingian denarius (hence its former abbreviation d.), it is usually the smallest denomination within a currency system. Presently, it is t ...

, leading to the epithet "penny weeklies". An 1859 issue of the ''London Review'' reported on a survey of periodicals stocked by London coffee-houses undertaken by the Pure Literature Society. They found 171 houses which stocked ''The Leisure Hour'' and 34 which stocked ''Sunday at Home'', both being Sunday reading magazines approved by the Society. They also found that 259 houses kept periodicals which the Society deemed "objectionable", such as ''

'' and '' The Family Herald''. The market for Sunday periodicals declined around the beginning of the 20th century as it became more socially acceptable to partake in secular entertainment on the Sabbath. In 1899, the annual report of the

Religious Tract Society The Religious Tract Society was a British evangelical Christian organization founded in 1799 and known for publishing a variety of popular religious and quasi-religious texts in the 19th century. The society engaged in charity as well as commerci ...

, which published multiple Sunday periodicals, stated that their publications "have to fight more or less for very life", and that "every year makes their way more difficult".

List of periodicals

References

{{reflist, refs= {{cite book, title=The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, editor-last=McKitterick, editor-first=David, publisher=Cambridge University Press, chapter=Mass markets: religion, last=Ledger-Lomas, first=Michael, year=2009, isbn=9780521866248 {{cite web, url=https://victorianweb.org/periodicals/sunday/cooke.html, last=Cooke, first=Simon, title=The Sunday Magazine, work=The Victorian Web, date=2 April 2013 {{cite book, title=The Lure of Illustration in the Nineteenth Century, chapter=Often Taken Where a Tract Is Refused: T.B. Smithies, the ''British Workman'', and the Popularisation of the Religious and Temperance Message, last=Murray, first=F., year=2009, pages=149–167, doi=10.1057/9780230233867_9, publisher=Palgrave Macmillan, isbn=978-1-349-30393-9 {{cite book, title=A Brief History of Life in Victorian Britain, last=Paterson, first=Michael, year=2008, publisher=Robinson, isbn=9781845297077, page=181 {{cite journal, title=The Sunday Periodical: "Sunday at Home", journal=Victorian Periodicals Review, volume=25, number=4, last=Scott, first=Rosemary, year=1992, pages=158–162, jstor=20082622, url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/20082622 Religious magazines Victorian culture Magazine publishing Lists of magazines Magazine genres