Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 709

VariousProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.7

Word count: 103K 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. 709 by VariousAuthor: Various,Language: English, Class: AP: General Works: Periodicals, Release Date: Jul 6, 2015

Editor's review

This is an electronic reprint of issue No. 709 of Chambers's Journal, the renowned nineteenth-century British popular periodical, spanning popular literature, science, and the arts and preserving the Victorian era's mode of circulating knowledge to a general readership. Its value lies not in any single celebrated piece but in showing how one era wove science, literature, and art into ordinary people's daily reading: one finds narrative writing alongside scientific explanation and artistic commentary, reflecting the editor's taste in setting them side by side. As a historical document, it is suited to observing nineteenth-century periodical style, column structure, and popular intellectual taste, and can also serve as material for reading longer English texts. A caution: the original is in English and carries period vocabulary and typographic conventions, so reading is best done selectively, by topic excerpts, rather than insisting on reading the whole issue through.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers studying nineteenth-century British periodicals and popular culture
Those who want to understand Victorian popular-science writing through primary texts
Readers with good English reading ability who enjoy the style of old periodicals
Teachers who need historical periodical material for teaching or writing reference

Not a good fit for

Readers hoping for a complete classic or systematic monograph
Beginners with weak English who need modern annotations
Readers seeking current, up-to-date scientific knowledge

Reading tips

First browse the table of contents and columns, choosing one or two literary and one or two scientific pieces to read.
Mark unfamiliar period vocabulary as you go, look it up after finishing the paragraph, and keep your reading rhythm.
Compare the short scientific pieces with other periodicals of the same era to observe differences in how knowledge is expressed.
If using it as writing material, excerpt original sentences by theme and note the issue number and column.

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

Is this book a complete issue of the magazine?

It corresponds to the electronic text of issue No. 709 of Chambers's Journal, prepared and released by Project Gutenberg. The content is a collection of articles from that issue, not a selected anthology or a bound volume of the whole run; the specific pieces are those actually included in the electronic text.

How difficult is the English?

The original is nineteenth-century English with rather long sentences, and some scientific and social topics require period background knowledge. Readers with university-level English reading ability can read selectively; unfamiliar concepts can be inferred from context, and there is no need to look up every word.

Is it suitable for reading straight through as a popular-science book?

Not really. It is a historical periodical text, and its scientific content reflects the understanding of its time rather than today's popular-science conclusions. It is better used as period reading and historical source material, with columns of interest read selectively, rather than as a systematic popular-science course.

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.