Popularizers, participation and the transformations of nineteenth-century publishing: From the 1860s to the 1880s

Focusing on the editors, journalists and authors who worked on the new ‘popular science’ periodicals and books from the 1860s to the 1880s, this piece will discuss how they conceived of their readers as co-participants in the creation of knowledge. The transformation of nineteenth-century publishing opened up opportunities for making science more accessible to a new polity of middle and working class readers. Editors, journalists and authors responded to the communications revolution, and the larger developments that accompanied it, by defining the exemplary scientist in opposition to the emerging conception of the professional scientist, by rejecting the notion that the laboratory was the sole legitimate site of scientific discovery and by experimenting with new ways of communicating scientific knowledge to their audience.