Religious Tract Society.

Becoming acquainted with a vast quantity of literature is one of the major perks on working for a large antiquarian book retailer. You can wade, waist-deep through paper tides of Biggles' and Uncle Tom's Cabins' and Dennis Wheatley's, all in their own sense fascinating, but (certainly the latter, at least) generally dreadful.

Uncle Tom's Cabin, in particular, fascinates me. The novel presents a grotesque caricature of slave-life; in some sense laudable due to it's rather progressive anti-slavery message, if deeply clumsy and stooped in Christian allegory. Especially galling as the bible advocates and justifies slavery in its very basis, but let's get beyond that.

We also find plenty of books from the Religious Tract Society, which would go on to become the Lutterworth Press, which is still around today, albeit in a highly abbreviated format. 

RTS books are generally quite hilarious. They are monotonously similar, to the point in which all you have to do is pick a main character, and then the story is virtually written for you.

Take The Blind Basket Maker , the story of the title character, Abel Curry. Abel feels only bitterness and anger towards the God that robbed him of his sight; he struck Abel's shed with a bolt of lightning. Abel's hard-working and smart, and despite his dislike for the almighty, makes a decent living as a basket-maker.

This disgusting paragraph sums the RTS' principle message on pg.39:

"Poor Abel! he had yet to learn that God never lets harm come to us but for some good. The good is often hidden, and the paid is all we know; but some day God will open our eyes to see how He was teaching us, and we shall praise Him that He did not give us our own way"

Abel's bitterness towards God appears to enrage our divine king, presumably violently irate that Abel was unable to see the funny side in being blinded for his own amusement.

God sends a thunderstorm to flood the river by which Abel does his work. He then sees fit to kill Abel's dog, and then his young daughter.

Not to worry though, because soon enough Abel meets a pious young girl named Mary. Her kindness renews his faith for some reason.

Unfortunately, Mary's father soon dies, so she comes to live with Abel and his wife.

The story ends there. Devout Mary's father dead, and Abel a broken man. But at least they have each other. The moral of the story is, it seems: your family will likely die, but don't worry, God will kill many other people's families, so you can just join together. All is well, praise Jesus. Amen.

Fuck the RTS.