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An experiment with science for the nineteenth-century book trade: the International Scientific Series

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2000

LESLIE HOWSAM
Affiliation:
University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario, N9B 3P4, Canada

Abstract

The theory, method and disciplinary foundations of ‘book history’ are addressed in the context of a close examination of the International Scientific Series, a set of monographs that appeared from 1871 to 1911 in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia and the United States. Working closely with entrepreneurial publishers, most authors of ISS volumes were scientific professionals (T. H. Huxley, John Tyndall, Herbert Spencer and E. L. Youmans were among the founders) aiming to educate a broad popular audience. Commercial, scholarly and other pressures made the texts less fixed than they appear: revisions, appendices and other evidences of textual instability have been overlooked by previous commentators.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2000 British Society for the History of Science

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