Cheap Bibles: Nineteenth-Century Publishing and the British and Foreign Bible Society

Description

The cheap Bibles of nineteenth-century Britain were not only read in millions of homes, embodying the Protestant principle of access to the Scriptures, but were also potent symbols of national virtue. In an age of social ferment cheap Bibles--most published by the British and Foreign Bible Society--represented both the promise of mass literacy and the benefits of industrialization. This book, based on correspondence and other archival records, tells the story of the BFBS from two perspectives: its place in the history of publishing and printing and in contemporary society.

"Leslie Howsam's Cheap Bibles is by far the most impressive... Cheap Bibles is no less than a definitive study of the British and Foreign Bible Society from its founding in 1804 to the 1860s. This is a gleaming example of imaginative, critically-aware bibliography." The Wordsworth Circle "This carefully constructed and elegantly documented book is an impressive contribution to the general cultural history of Britain in the first two-thirds of the nineteenth century." History of Education Quarterly "This book is greatly to be welcomed and will prove to be of value not only to historians of publishing, but to all of those concerned with the history of early nineteenth-century Britain." The Library Quarterly "Howsam's book is an important resource to researchers in the social, cultural, printing, and publishing history of the period." Victorian Studies