Three Times Three: A Story for Young People

Three authors collaborated on this 1898 temperance tale, each writing about one of three families, each family with three siblings. The story follows Malcolm Courtney and his friend Renwick Marx, whose descent into alcoholism at a young age serves as a stark warning to readers. The nine young people in the narrative face choices about virtue and vice, with alcohol acting as the central moral threat. Written for boys around twelve years old as part of the Sunday School Library collection, it uses narrative to deliver its temperance message. For modern readers, it offers a window into late Victorian moral literature for young people, and into the anxieties of an era when alcoholism was seen as one of society's greatest dangers. A historical artifact that reveals what adults once thought necessary to teach children about the perils of drink.