The Leisure Hour was a British general-interest periodical of the Victorian era published weekly from 1852 to 1905. It was the most successful of several popular magazines published by the Religious Tract Society, which produced Christian literature for a wide audience. Each issue mixed multiple genres of fiction and factual stories, historical and topical.
The cover of issue 1032, with an illustration accompanying a story about a shipwreck.
John Keble, 1867
Mary Somerville, 1871
Charles Dickens, 1904
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 commercial enterprise, publishing books and periodicals for profit.
The Depository of the Religious Tract Society at 56 Paternoster Row, opened in 1844.
Illustration from 1880 issue of The Sunday at Home, a magazine published by the RTS.