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Editing entomology: natural-history periodicals and the shaping of scientific communities in nineteenth-century Britain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 April 2019

MATTHEW WALE
MATTHEW WALE*
Affiliation:
University of Leicester. Email: [email protected].
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Abstract

This article addresses the issue of professionalization in the life sciences during the second half of the nineteenth century through a survey of British entomological periodicals. It is generally accepted that this period saw the rise of professional practitioners and the emergence of biology (as opposed to the older mode of natural history). However, recent scholarship has increasingly shown that this narrative elides the more complex processes at work in shaping scientific communities from the 1850s to the turn of the century. This article adds to such scholarship by examining the ways in which the editors of four entomological periodicals from across this time frame attempted to shape the communities of their readership, and in particular focuses upon the apparent divide between ‘mere collectors’ and ‘entomologists’ as expressed within these journals. Crucially, the article argues that non-professional practitioners were active in defining their own distinct identities and thereby claiming scientific authority. Alongside the periodicals, the article makes use of the correspondence archive of the entomologist and periodical editor Henry Tibbats Stainton (1822–1892), which has hitherto not been subject to sustained analysis by historians.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 52 , Issue 3 , September 2019 , pp. 405 - 423
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 2019 

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Footnotes

This research was conducted as part of the AHRC-funded Constructing Scientific Communities: Citizen Science in the Nineteenth and Twenty-First Centuries project. I would particularly like to thank Gowan Dawson, Sally Shuttleworth, Paul Cooper, Julie Harvey, Geoff Belknap, Issy Staniaszek and Richard Fallon. I am also very grateful for the complimentary and constructive feedback of Charlotte Sleigh and two anonymous reviewers.

References

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20 Intelligencer (1858–1859) 5, p. 181, original emphasis.

21 Intelligencer, op. cit. (20), p. 79, original emphasis.

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26 See the editors’ obituaries: (Knaggs) Entomologist's Monthly Magazine (1908) 44, p. 49; (McLachlan) Entomologist's Monthly Magazine (1904) 40, pp. 145–148; (Rye) Entomologist's Monthly Magazine (1884–1885) 21, pp. 238–240.

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30 Robert McLachlan to H.T. Stainton, 14 March 1864, NHM, Box 66.

31 McLachlan to Stainton, 14 March 1864, NHM, Box 66.

32 Stainton to Knaggs, 10 May 1864, NHM, Box 59.

33 Knaggs to Stainton, 11 May 1864, NHM, Box 59.

34 McLachlan to Stainton, 9 May 1864, NHM, Box 66.

35 Entomologist's Monthly Magazine, op. cit. (27), p. 1.

36 Knaggs to Stainton, 30 April 1864, NHM, Box 59.

37 Knaggs to Stainton, 11 May 1864, NHM, Box 59. A copy of Stainton's reply, dated 13 May 1864, is written on the reverse of Knaggs's letter.

38 Sheets-Pyenson, op. cit. (13), p. 562.

39 Barton, op. cit. (8), p. 29.

40 Entomologist (1864–1865) 2, pp. v–vi.

41 Entomologist, op. cit. (40), p. xvi.

42 Sheets-Pyenson, op. cit. (13).

43 Entomologist (1866–1867) 3, pp. v–viii.

44 Knaggs to Stainton, 21 December 1865, NHM, Box 59.

45 Knaggs to Stainton, 28 May 1864, NHM, Box 59.

46 Entomologist, op. cit. (40), p. 152.

47 Knaggs to Stainton, 8 January 1865, NHM, Box 59.

48 Entomologist, op. cit. (40), p. 163; Knaggs to Stainton, 8 February 1865, NHM, Box 59.

49 Entomologist's Record, op. cit. (1), p. 1.

50 Transactions of the Entomological Society of London (1890), pp. xlix–l.

51 Clarke, op. cit. (4), pp. 114–131.

52 Entomologist's Record, op. cit. (1), p. i.

53 Entomologist's Record (1901) 13, p. 27.

54 Entomologist's Record, op. cit. (53), p. 32.

55 Entomologist's Record, op. cit. (1), p. 99

56 Entomologist's Record, op. cit. (1), p. 99.