Suscribing to Faith? The Anglican Parish Magazine 1859-1929

"This book introduces the reader to a subject which, until now, has been almost totally ignored by scholars. Seeking to change the Cinderella status of parish magazines, the book reveals their importance as a source for the studies of both religion and mass-market publishing. Parish magazines usually contained commercially published 'insets', making them a microcosm of the Anglican Church's role as a conduit for national issues into the local community; yet, despite the propagandist potential and wide circulation of such magazines, their content offered subscribers a diet of anxiety and despair over religious and social change, along with a laissez-faire approach to the effects of commercialism. Suffering from a collapse of confidence and vision, and mired in its internecine wars, the Church of England, 1859-1929, eventually proved unable to utilise the technological advances presented by mass-market publishing to its own advantage"--