Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 695

VariousProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.5

Word count: 101K words
Chapters: 11

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 695 by VariousAuthor: Various,Language: English, Class: AP: General Works: Periodicals, Release Date: Oct 11, 2014

Editor's review

This is the public electronic edition of issue No. 695 of the 19th-century British popular periodical Chambers's Journal, a historical document digitized by Project Gutenberg. Its value lies not in reading it cover to cover but in its being a specimen of Victorian knowledge dissemination: a single issue combines popular literature, scientific information, and art criticism, reflecting how middle-class readers of the time obtained both entertainment and edification from one publication. For scholars of periodical history, the history of science popularization, or British popular publishing, it is usable primary material; for general readers, it is more a window onto the editorial tastes of old periodicals. When reading, it is more rewarding to approach it with the question of how sections divide labor and how registers shift than to read page by page. Note that the original is in English and that this is a public-domain scanned edition whose layout and annotations follow the source copy.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Scholars studying Victorian periodicals and the history of popular publishing
Readers interested in 19th-century texts of science popularization
Students of English and American literature needing English primary material for textual analysis
Casual readers who enjoy browsing old periodicals and sensing the register of the era

Not a good fit for

Readers seeking a complete long novel or a systematic monograph
Beginners who struggle with English and need sentence-by-sentence annotation
Ordinary e-book users expecting modern typography and editorial introductions

Reading tips

First skim the table of contents and section divisions, then sample a short story or science piece to gauge the difficulty of the register.
Treat it as historical source material rather than entertainment, jotting down details of section arrangement, advertisements, and readers' letters.
For research, compare it with other popular periodicals of the same period to observe differences in how scientific topics are presented.
Read only one or two pieces at a time to avoid fatigue from the period register and dense length.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

What types of content does this issue mainly contain?

According to the material, the journal is positioned as a magazine of popular literature, science, and art, so a single issue usually mixes literary works, scientific information, and art-related writing. For specific contents, consult the main text of the electronic edition; the material itself does not list them, and one should not guess the content of individual pieces from the title.

What if the English source text is difficult to read?

Start with shorter science or art passages to get used to 19th-century periodical syntax and diction, then move on to the literary sections. Use reference works for unfamiliar proper names, but do not look up every word; grasping the intent of a section matters more than exact wording.

Is this electronic edition suitable for reading straight through as general reading?

Not really. It is a digitized single issue, and the sections have no continuous narrative, so reading straight through easily loses the thread. A more reasonable approach is to read selectively according to interest and to understand it in the context of periodical history and the history of science popularization.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Various Author

Various is not a real person but a collective attribution used in book cataloging and databases for works with multiple authors, commonly applied to anthologies, compilations, or publications with too many contributors to list individually. On this Chinese book site, this attribution covers as many as 3,387 titles, spanning encyclopedic entries, historical documents, and trial records. Representative works include several volumes of the 11th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the record of the trial of the major war criminals before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. Available public information is limited: nationality, birth and death dates, and common categories are not clearly recorded, making it difficult to summarize a unified writing style or personal biography. Readers should understand it as a cataloging convention rather than a single author.