Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 12, No. 30,

VariousProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.4
Word count
426K words
Chapters
43

Tags

Other Popular ScienceLiterature Science EnlightenmentMagazine SelectionPopular ExplanationEclectic ReadingSocial ObservationVictorian Era

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.Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 12, No. 30,Author: Various,Language: English, Class: AP: General Works: Periodicals, Release Date: Nov 13, 2004

Editor's review

This is Volume 12, No. 30 of Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, an English-language original periodical digitized by Project Gutenberg as a public-domain e-book. Published in nineteenth-century America, the magazine combined literature with popular science in a mixed lineup: fiction, essays, travel sketches, short science pieces, and reviews side by side, with the rhythm shifting continually within a single issue. Its value lies not in the depth of any one piece but in its "slice of an era"—readers can see directly what the public cared about, in what tone science was discussed, and how literature was packaged for everyday reading. For those studying nineteenth-century Anglo-American periodical culture, the popularization of science, or Victorian reading tastes, such original periodicals are rare primary material. General readers can also treat it as an anthology to dip into: no need to read in order; pick a title and enter, and most short pieces take only a few minutes. Note that the original typography and wording carry the marks of their time, and some scientific statements are outdated, so it is better used as historical material than as a source of knowledge.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. Start with the table of contents and pick three pieces from different sections to feel the logic of pairing literature with science.
  2. Read outdated scientific statements as historical material, noting the argumentation and popular ideas of the time.
  3. Read only one or two pieces at a time, jotting down period expressions to build up nineteenth-century English usage.
  4. For research, compare with other periodicals of the same period to see differences in section design and intended readership.

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.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43

FAQ

Is the science in this magazine still credible today? Most short science pieces reflect the knowledge level of the mid-to-late nineteenth century, and some conclusions and statements have since been revised or even overturned by later research. Read it as material on the history of science communication, focusing on how people then explained natural phenomena and addressed the public, rather than as a citable source of present-day knowledge.
Can I read it without relevant background? Yes. The sections were aimed at general readers, and most articles are short with plain language. The main difficulties are old-style spelling, historical names, and period allusions; skip or look them up as needed. Treating it as an old-periodical anthology to dip into suits it better than systematic reading from cover to cover.
Is this issue suitable for learning English? It suits intermediate and advanced learners for extensive reading and language sense training, offering contact with nineteenth-century written English syntax and vocabulary. But some expressions are no longer common and should not serve as models for speech or modern writing. Aim for understanding the gist and accumulating old-style expressions, and use it alongside modern annotated materials.

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.