Diffusing Knowledge

The First Report of the British and Foreign Bible Society. London, 1805.  

The British and Foreign Bible Society was created in 1804 to publish reasonably priced editions of the Bible in numerous languages and to distribute them worldwide. Its first report lists many subscribers and benefactors. The Society was an immediate success, rapidly becoming the largest publisher of Bibles in Great Britain, and the largest customer of the Cambridge and Oxford University Presses, which along with the King’s Printer held the “privilege” to print the authorized edition of the Bible in England and Wales.  

The Holy Bible. Cambridge Stereotype Edition. Cambridge, 1806. 

Holding a near monopoly on Bible printing did not motivate Cambridge University Press to adopt printing machines at an early date. The press was, however, an early user of the innovative Stanhope method of stereotyping. This is the 1806 printing of the first edition of the Bible using stereotype plates, following the first stereotype printing in 1805. The original leather cover bears the difficult-to-see circular blind stamp of the British Bible Society on the upper cover.  

An Appeal to Mechanics, Labourers, and Others Respecting Bible Associations. Bradford, 1816.   

Initially, most supporters of the British and Foreign Bible Society were members of the upper classes. Eventually, however, the Society also raised money from their mainly working-class customers. This broadside appeals to “mechanics, labourers, and others,” advising them that “a labouring man, who can just support his family, may well afford a penny a week to a Bible Association ... to be a benefactor of a man poorer than himself.” 

The World, Designed to show the Languages and Dialects into which The British & Foreign Bible Society has translated the Scriptures or aided in their distribution; The Position of the Places Where Societies Have Been Formed; The Population of those Countries For which Versions Have Been Prepared & the Relative Proportions of Christianity, Mahomedanism and Paganism. 2nd ed. London, 1841.  

This very specialized, hand-colored world map shows how many Bibles the British & Foreign Bible Society had sold worldwide by 1841. The detailed captions at the bottom specify the number of copies sold in different countries. By 1841, the organization had distributed 22,288,706 Bibles around the world at a cost of nearly 2,800,000 pounds sterling. Most of these volumes were probably printed on handpresses, often from stereotype plates.  

Carte de visite photograph of Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux, presumably with a grandchild. c. 1850.   

Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux, was a British MP and reformer. He played a prominent role in passing the 1832 Reform Act to expand the franchise and the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833. He founded the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (SDUK), which took advantage of innovations like printing machines to issue large numbers of inexpensive publications intended to educate the working classes. Brougham was frequently depicted—and often caricatured—in magazines and newspapers. 

Henry Brougham. A Discourse of the Objects, Advantages, and Pleasures of Science. London, 1827  

Lord Brougham launched the SDUK with this widely reprinted pamphlet. Through the mid-1840s. the SDUK published hundreds of publications, including the first mass-circulation magazine, The Penny Magazine. The organization seems to have been run by volunteers; publishers such as Charles Knight generally assumed the financial risk of the Society’s publishing ventures, some of which were profitable. 

John Limbird. The Mirror of Literature, Amusement and Instruction, No. 1. 2 November 1822.

For the cover of the issue launching his magazine, publisher John Limbird featured people operating a treadmill at the Brixton workhouse—undoubtedly a controversial topic at the time because it exploited the labor of people who could not pay their bills.  

The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 2. November 9, 1822.  

According to Henry Broughman’s 1825 pamphlet Practical Observations upon the Education of the People, Addressed to the Working Classes and Their Employers, The Mirror magazine achieved a circulation of eighty thousand copies per week. This preposterous illustration and article about a mermaid graces the first page of the second issue, and its low cost and sensational content were undoubtedly factors in the magazine’s commercial success. Whether it was printed on printing machines or handpresses at this time is uncertain, as eighty thousand copies per week was possible with enough handpresses and large numbers of pressmen working long hours. William Clowes, the first printer to exploit machine printing in book production at scale, installed his first steam-powered press in 1823. 

The Penny Magazine, No. 1. 31 March 1832.  

The Penny Magazine, published for the SDUK by Charles Knight, was the first weekly magazine to achieve a true mass-market circulation. At its peak, the print run was two hundred thousand copies per week, sold for just a penny per copy. Knight claimed the weekly readership was potentially one million people, assuming copies were passed around households. Knight depended on large quantities of machine-made paper and the new high-speed steam-powered printing machines to achieve these numbers. The first issue had only three small woodcuts, but over time, the number and size of woodcuts per issue increased. 

The March of Intellect. Frontispiece for The Penny Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, Vol. 1. 

While its content tended to be practical, noncontroversial and bland, The Penny Magazine was a sensation simply because it was read by such a diverse sample of British society. This undated print, probably published in the mid-1830s, satirized the wide and socially diverse impact The Penny Magazine was having on society. A caricature of the magazine’s instigator, Lord Brougham, appears in the center of the print. 

Converts from Infidelity. Constable’s Miscellany, Vol. 6. London, 1827.   

While the Panic of 1825 crash did not reduce the number of publishers in England between 1825 and 1827, it radically altered the nature of the industry. The economic downturn made expensive luxury books less desirable, increased the market for cheap publications, and encouraged serialization. One of the first British publishers to capitalize on this demand was Archibald Constable of Edinburgh, who in 1826 launched Constable’s Miscellany of Original and Select Publications, a series of inexpensive, clothbound, small-format volumes. 

Émile de Girardin. Journal des Connaissances Utiles, Vol. 1. October 1831.

Launched in October 1831, the French publisher and politician Émile de Girardin’s monthly Journal des Connaissances Utiles was a precursor to the The Penny Magazine. The first three issues of this journal of “useful knowledge ... for all men who know how to read” claimed a print run of one hundred thousand on their title pages. In the journal’s second year, the covers declared that it contained 168,000 individual letters, as if the number of letters (rather than words) would impress Girardin’s customers. Girardin published the magazine as a monthly because he did not have printing machines. With handpresses, production took a month. For the most part, Girardin’s journal was not illustrated. 

Émile de Girardin. L'Almanach de France. Paris, 1833.   

On the cover of the first edition of his pocket Almanach for 1833, Girardin took the unusual step of stating that 1.3 million copies had been printed. Perhaps even more remarkable, he stated that the text was composed of six hundred thousand individual letters. The Almanach was published by the Société pour l’Émancipation Intellectuelle (the Society for Intellectual Emancipation). Girardin claimed it would be sold in 37,200 French towns. Because it was an annual publication, 1.3 million copies would have been possible even without printing machines, if Girardin actually did sell that many. 

Library of Useful Knowledge: Hydrostatics, Hydraulics, Pneumatics. London, 1827. 

In 1827, the SDUK began its extensive publishing program with the Library of Useful Knowledge, of which this was the first of many pamphlets issued on a variety of topics the society deemed “useful.” These and later publications from the SDUK carried the names of all SDUK committee members, many of whom were well-known, on their upper cover, presumably to add authority to the publications. From the beginning of its publishing program, the SDUK avoided religious controversies and excluded news coverage to avoid the “taxes on knowledge” assessed on news publications in England from about 1815 to the 1850s.  

The Library of Entertaining Knowledge. The Menageries, Vols. 1 and 2 in the original 4 parts. London, 1829–1831. 

The SDUK’s Library of Entertaining Knowledge, which began publication in 1829, was meant to be less serious and more entertaining than the SDUK’s Library of Useful Knowledge. Vol. 1, The Menageries, was written by its publisher, Charles Knight, but published anonymously on 1 April 1829. It was the first extensively illustrated book printed on a printing machine. As in their Library of Useful Knowledge, the SDUK published the names of all their committee members on the upper cover of each part. Whether that was for purposes of self-congratulation or because they believed publishing all their names would stimulate sales is unclear. 

William & Robert Chambers. Information for the People. Edinburgh, 1835.  

In Edinburgh, the publishers William and Robert Chambers devoted no. 35 of their Information for the People to the history of printing and publishing technology, including illustrations and detailed descriptions of their new printing machine, a variant of the Applegath & Cowper double-cylinder perfecting machine. Like many who adopted the new printing technology, the Chambers brothers wrote about their printing machine because the technology was of interest to their readers. 

Engraved portrait of Charles Knight from his obituary in The Illustrated London News. 22 March 1873.   

A prolific publisher and writer, Charles Knight was one of the greatest promoters of printing machines to produce low-priced, high-circulation publications. Among his many roles, he was the editor and publisher of The Penny Magazine, and the primary publisher for the SDUK. Most of the SDUK’s publications were printed by the London industrial printer William Clowes.