The Tracts for the Times were a series of 90 theological publications, varying in length from a few pages to book-length, produced by members of the English Oxford Movement, an Anglo-Catholic revival group, from 1833 to 1841. There were about a dozen authors, including Oxford Movement leaders John Keble, John Henry Newman and Edward Pusey, with Newman taking the initiative in the series, and making the largest contribution. With the wide distribution associated with the tract form, and a price in pennies, the Tracts succeeded in drawing attention to the views of the Oxford Movement on points of doctrine, but also to its overall approach, to the extent that Tractarian became a synonym for supporter of the movement.
Contents
Publication
Many of the tracts were labelled, indicating their intended audience: Ad Clerum (to the clergy), Ad Populum (to the people), or Ad Scholas (to scholars). The first 20 tracts appeared in 1833, with 30 more in 1834. After that the pace slowed, but the later contributions were more substantive on doctrinal matters. Initially these publications were anonymous, pseudonymous, or reprints from theologians of previous centuries. The authorship details of the tracts were recovered by later scholars of the Oxford Movement, with some tentative accounts of drafting. Through Francis Rivington, the tracts were published by the Rivingtons house in London.
Opposition
The Tracts also provoked a secondary literature from opponents. Significant replies from the evangelicals, that is, Low Church Anglicans, were those of William Goode in Tract XC Historically Refuted (1845) and Isaac Taylor. The term "Tractarian" applied to followers of Keble, Pusey and Newman (the Oxford Movement) was used by 1839, in sermons by Christopher Benson.
The series was brought to an end by the intervention of Richard Bagot, Bishop of Oxford, not unsympathetic to the Tractarians, after the appearance of Newman's Tract 90, which suggested a heterodox reading of the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England, and caused controversy in the University.
Literature
William Palmer in 1843 published A Narrative of Events Connected with the Publication of the Tracts for the Times, dedicated to Bagot. In the Preface he is concerned with arguing against the point of view that the Tracts were an attempt to introduce Roman Catholic beliefs; to place the Tracts in the context set up by the 1833 formation of the Association of Friends of the Church (set up by Hugh James Rose, Hurrell Froude and Palmer himself) that was the initial step in the Oxford Movement; and to distance his views from the editorial line of the British Critic. This work then provoked a major statement of his position by William George Ward.
Further publications
Two other ambitious projects of the Oxford Movement as a whole were conceived and launched in the same period: the Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology that gave extensive republication to the works of the Caroline Divines and others who were cited in the Tracts; and the Library of the Fathers. Isaac Williams with William John Copeland edited Plain Sermons by Contributors to the Tracts for the Times, in ten volumes, appearing from 1839 to 1848.