SPCK Tracts and Rites of Passage in the Long Nineteenth Century

This article investigates how the SPCK, Church of England's major nineteenth-century publishing house, encouraged what it saw as correct participation in church-administered rites passage, by mass production tracts. SPCK's elaborate editorial policy meant that tracts provide a rare glimpse into can be assumed to officially sanctioned voice, giving significance beyond their survival ephemeral religious literature. The discusses relating marriage, baptism, churching and confirmation, audience for which was mainly, although not exclusively, working-class adherents England. It highlights tangle between theological ideas social expectations, well echoes some other theorists – from Malthus Freud found way thinking at different times during this period.