'We want no authors': William Nicholson and the contested role of the scientific journal in Britain, 1797-1813

British Journal for the History of Science

Volumn 47, Issue 3, 2014, Pages 397-419

  Watts, Iain P ^a  

^a PRINCETON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84905092982     PISSN: 00070874     EISSN: 1474001X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0007087413000964     Document Type: Review

References (115)

1. Attributed to Banks in [Olinthus Gregory], 'A review of some leading points in the official character and proceedings of the late President of the Royal Society', Philosophical Magazine (1820) 56, p. 252.
2. Edward Hatfield, 'Utility of periodical publications', Monthly Magazine (1816) 42, pp. 421-422.
3. Preface, Mechanics' Magazine (1826) 5, pp. iii-vi, iv-v.
4. Adrian Johns, The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998.
5. James Secord, Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000.
6. For an overview see Jonathan R. Topham, 'Scientific publishing and the reading of science in nineteenthcentury Britain: a historiographical survey and guide to sources', Studies in History and Philosophy of Science (2000) 31, pp. 559-612.
7. More generally see Robert Darnton, 'What is the history of books?', in Darnton, The Kiss of Lamourette: Reflections in Cultural History, New York: Norton, 1990, pp. 107-135;
8. and James Secord, 'Knowledge in transit', Isis (2004) 95, pp. 654-672.
9. Topham, op. cit. (6), p. 575.
10. For the economics of print more generally in this period seeWilliam St Clair, The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
11. and David Bickerton, Marc-Auguste and Charles Pictet: The Bibliothèque Britannique (1796-1815) and the Dissemination of British Literature and Science on the Continent, Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1986.
12. See also the publishing history of the Philosophical Magazine in W.H. Brock and A.J. Meadows, The Lamp of Learning: Taylor & Francis and the Development of Science Publishing, London: Taylor and Francis, 1998, pp. 89-109;
13. and the more traditional view of the history of the scientific periodical in David Kronick, A History of Scientific & Technical Periodicals: The Origins and Development of the Scientific and Technical press, 1665-1790, Metuchen: Scarecrow Press, 1976.
14. See especially the fine studies G.N. Cantor et al., Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical: Reading the Magazine of Nature, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004;
15. G.N. Cantor and Sally Shuttleworth (eds.), Science Serialized: Representations of the Sciences in Nineteenth-Century Periodicals, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004.
16. Also James Secord, 'Science, technology and mathematics', in David McKitterick (ed.), The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, vol. 4 (1830-1914), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, pp. 451-459.
17. For a new perspective via the in-depth history of one journal that achieved particular prominence in this later period see Melinda Baldwin, 'Nature and the making of a scientific community, 1869-1939', PhD thesis, Princeton University, 2010.
18. See, for example, the Philosophical Magazine online archive at www.tandfonline.com/page/philmagarchive
19. Annalen der Physik at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com, accessed 22 August 2013.
20. see, for example, Jan Golinski, Science as Public Culture: Chemistry and Enlightenment in Britain, 1760-1820, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp. 253-254.
21. But for the last attempt to grapple with the Journal in detail, albeit without the benefit of manuscript evidence, we have to go back over sixty years to S. Lilley, 'Nicholson's Journal, 1797-1813', Annals of Science (1948) 6, pp. 78-101.
22. A circulation of a thousand is given in Monthly Magazine (1806) 26, p. 163.
23. Coleridge's reading notes are reproduced in Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Marginalia, vol. 3 (ed. H. J. Jackson and George Whalley), Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992, pp. 936-953.
24. Such bold and seemingly hyperbolic claims, like the Mechanics' Magazine's assertion that there was 'not one scientific journal' in the world in 1765 (Preface, Mechanics' Magazine (1826) 6, p. v)
25. On the early modern journals see Anne Goldgar, Impolite Learning: Conduct and Community in the Republic of Letters, 1680-1750, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995, pp. 54-114;
26. Thomas Broman, 'Periodical literature', in Maria Frasca-Spada and Nick Jardine (eds.), Books and the Sciences in History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 225-238.
27. Jonathan Topham, 'Anthologizing the book of Nature: the circulation of knowledge and the origins of the scientific journal in late Georgian Britain', in Bernard Lightman, Gordon McOuat and Larry Stewart (eds.), The Circulation of Knowledge between Britain, India and China: The Early-Modern World to the Twentieth Century, Leiden: Brill, 2013, pp. 119-152.
28. Stuart Andrews, The British Periodical Press and the French Revolution, London: Palgrave, 2000.
29. Outsider status also applied to early Continental editors of commercial journals, for example Jean-Baptiste François Rozier, the founder of the Journal de physique: James McClellan, 'The Scientific press in transition: Rozier's journal and the scientific societies in the 1770s', Annals of Science (1979) 36, pp. 425-449.
30. Biographical information on Nicholson deployed here is sourced primarily from a biographical memoir of him published in European Magazine (1812) 62, pp. 83-87;
31. an obituary in the New Monthly Magazine (1815) 4, pp. 76-77;
32. Wedgwood possessed extensive scientific and commercial connections as well as links to Dissenterowned periodicals such as the Monthly Review: DNB; Benjamin Nangle, The Monthly Review, Second Series, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955, p. xii.
33. For Godwin's exertions in this world see Peter Marshall, William Godwin, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984.
34. William Hazlitt, Table-Talk: Original Essays on Men and Manners, vol. 1, London: Templeman, 1857, p. 128.
35. William Nicholson, An Introduction to Natural Philosophy, 2 vols., London: J. Johnson, 1782.
36. William Nicholson, A Dictionary of Chemistry, 2 vols., London: G.G. and J. Robinson, 1795.
37. Nicholson received £420 for the copyright of his Chemical Dictionary, and a further £250 for improvements to the second edition. 'George Robinson copyright documents', Greater Manchester County Record Office, ff. 81, 71.
38. For the 'Philosophical and Chemical Lectures' see advertising in, for example: The Sun, 22 October 1799.
39. Nicholson's reputation for scientific and technical acumen dates from at least 1784 when he was appointed secretary of the Coffeehouse Philosophical Society: T.H. Levere and G. L'E. Turner, Discussing Chemistry and Steam: The Minutes of a Coffeehouse Philosophical Society, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 19.
40. The decomposition of water was in collaboration with the surgeon Anthony Carlisle: Nicholson's Journal, 1st series (1800) 4, 179-187.
41. On the context of this experiment see Giuliano Pancaldi, Volta: Science and Culture in the Age of Enlightenment, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005, pp. 212-218, 228-230.
42. Prospectus of a new Miscellany, to be Entitled, The Monthly Magazine; or, British Register, London, 1796, p. 2.
43. See Geoffrey Carnall, 'The Monthly Magazine', Review of English Studies (1954) 5, pp. 158-164.
44. For example Monthly Magazine (1796) 1, pp. 111-112, on improving electrical machines.
45. Advertising pamphlet for Nicholson's Journal, London, 1799, p. 1.
46. See the review of Nicholson's Journal in Critical Review (1799) 26, p. 283.
47. On Tilloch, a Glasgow-born newspaper owner, journalist and inventor, see his obituary in Gentleman's Magazine (1825) 95, pp. 276-281;
48. also DNB; and Brock and Meadows, op. cit. (8), 90-93.
49. For Banks's efforts to exclude any trace of radical politics from the Royal Society see John Gascoigne, Joseph Banks and the English Enlightenment: Useful Knowledge and Polite Culture, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 251-253.
50. Gentleman's Magazine (1825) 95, p. 281.
51. On Nicholson's candidature see the admittedly highly polemical [Gregory], op. cit. (1), p. 252
52. Another failed Royal Society candidate, Joseph Des Barres, had previously been disdained for supposedly being a 'writer of periodical publications': An History of the Instances of Exclusion from the Royal Society, London: Debrett, 1784, p. 16.
53. Submitted to the Consideration of the Bench of Bishops. By aWeak Christian, London, 1781; the identification is written in on the title page of the British Library copy.
54. Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine (1798) 1, pp. 1-3.
55. Alan Wharam, The Treason Trials, 1794, Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1992.
56. Life of William Nicholson', op. cit. (16). Thelwall maintained a close involvement with periodical journalism, and eventually edited the Monthly Magazine; Carnall, op. cit. (28), p. 163.
57. Banks to Count Rumford, April 1804, in The Scientific Correspondence of Sir Joseph Banks, vol. 5 (ed. Neil Chambers), London: Pickering and Chatto, 2007 (subsequently Banks Correspondence), p. 348.
58. Godwin's diaries record his frequent conversations with Nicholson at the time on subjects such as 'constitutions', 'labour', 'government', 'contract' and 'property': Diary of William Godwin for 1792-3, Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS. Abinger e.4.
59. Advertising in, for example, London Chronicle, 30 March 1797, 1 April 1797;
60. St James's Chronicle, or the British Evening Post, 28 March 1797, 30 March 1797; Star, 1 April 1797.
61. Nicholson received a sizeable £285 from his share in the first (yearly) volume, though most of this would probably have been needed to cover previous outlays on paper and printing. 'George Robinson copyright documents', op. cit. (23), f. 69.
62. For the copyright transfer see Nicholson's statement in Nicholson's Journal, 2nd series (1813) 34, p. 152;
63. 'George Robinson copyright documents', op. cit. (23), ff. 66-67.
64. Nicholson both sold the Robinsons firm copies of the journal at a wholesale price and (at another time) had them sell it on a 5 per cent commission: 'George Robinson copyright documents', op. cit. (23), ff. 57-58, 66-67.
65. New Monthly Magazine (1815) 6, p. 77, describes him in these terms.
66. For the origins of the natural-philosophical 'projector' see Larry Stewart, The Rise of Public Science: Rhetoric, Technology, and Natural Philosophy in Newtonian Britain, 1660-1750, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
67. For similar figures in the context of the Industrial Revolution and 'useful knowledge' see Joel Mokyr, The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain 1700-1850, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009.
68. New Monthly Magazine (1815) 4, p. 77.
69. Anthony Carlisle to John Symmonds, 21 May 1815
70. For Godwin's repayment of this hospitality in repeatedly bailing Nicholson out of debtors' prison see William St Clair, The Godwins and the Shelleys: The Biography of a Family, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989, p. 290.
71. Nicholson's Journal, 2nd series (1813) 36, pp. 387-390.
72. Preface, Mechanics' Magazine (1826) 5, pp. iii-vi, as quoted in my introduction.
73. Other women may well have occasionally written in under pseudonyms, or gender-neutrally as Ibbetson initially did as 'A. Ibbetson': Nicholson's Journal, 2nd series (1809), 23, pp. 161-173, 293-300.
74. A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy, London: Longman, 1831, p. 352.
75. See also the introductory remarks to the first issue of Benjamin Silliman's American Journal of Science (1818) 1, pp. 1-2
76. See also Marie Boas Hall, All Scientists Now: The Royal Society in the Nineteenth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984, pp. 1-15.
77. On the history of priority claims and their shifting relation to print see Mario Biagioli, 'From ciphers to confidentiality: secrecy, openness and priority in science', BJHS (2012) 45, pp. 213-233;
78. Csiszar, op. cit. (9), pp. 101-152.
79. see Crosland, op. cit. (8), pp. 121-122.
80. Golinski, op. cit. (11).
81. Prospectus of a new Miscellany, op. cit. (28), pp. 1-2.
82. Among many examples is the work that helped to launch the career of Humphry Davy, who had six separate reports of experiments printed over seven consecutive issues. Nicholson's Journal, 1st series (1800) 4, pp. 275-281, 326-328, 337-342, 380-381, 394-402, 527.
83. Critical Review (1799) 26, p. 283.
84. Charles Knight, Passages of a Working Life during Half a Century: With a Prelude of Early Reminiscences, vol. 1, London: Bradbury and Evans, 1864, pp. 263-264.
85. see Bickerton, op. cit. (8), p. 239.
86. Knight, op. cit. (70), p. 271.
87. Prospectus for Nicholson's Journal, London, 1797, pp. 1-2.
88. Nicholson's Journal, 1st series (1799) 2, pp. 467-468.
89. Nicholson's Journal, 1st series (1800) 3, pp. 23-28.
90. Mary Terrall, 'The uses of anonymity in the Age of Reason', in Mario Biagioli and Peter Galison (eds.), Scientific Authorship: Credit and Intellectual Property in Science, New York: Routledge, 2003, pp. 91-112.
91. F.A. Winsor, Mr. Nicholson's Attack in his Philosophical Journal on Mr. Winsor and the National Light and Heat Company; with Mr. Winsor's Defence, London: printed by G. Sidney, 1807.
92. On the availability of French scientific material in Britain see Jonathan R. Topham, 'Science, print, and crossing borders: importing French science books into Britain, 1789-1815' David N. Livingstone and CharlesWithers (eds.), Geographies of Nineteenth-Century Science, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2011, pp. 311-344.
93. Nicholson's Journal, 1st series (1797) 1, pp. iii-iv.
94. Advertising pamphlet for Nicholson's Journal, London, 1799, p. 1.
95. see Topham, op. cit. (14), pp. 128-130.
96. Monthly Review (1799) 29, p. 304;
97. Analytical Review (1798) 28, pp. 363-377;
98. Critical Review (1799) 26, pp. 283-289.
99. British Critic and Quarterly Theological Review (1799) 12, p. 117.
100. For a broad survey see Adrian Johns, Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009.
101. Nicholson's Journal, 1st series (1797) 1, p. iv.
102. Nicholson to Banks, 12 March 1802, British Library Add. MS 33981, f. 4, published in Banks Correspondence, op. cit. (40), pp. 147-148.
103. Draft letter of Banks to Nicholson, 12 March 1802, British Library Add. MS 33981, f. 4, published in Banks Correspondence, op. cit. (40), pp. 148-149.
104. David Miller, 'Sir Joseph Banks: an historiographical perspective', History of Science (1981) 19, pp. 284-292.
105. Gascoigne, op. cit. (33), p. 256.
106. Unpublished letter, Nicholson to Banks, 23 April 1802, British Library Add. MS 33981, f. 25.
107. Unpublished draft letter, Banks to Nicholson, 24 April 1802, British Library Add. MS 33981, f. 26.
108. Unpublished letter, Nicholson to Banks, 25 April 1802, British Library Add. MS 33981, ff. 27-28.
109. The papers in question were Thomas Young's well-known 1802 Bakerian lecture on three-colour vision and a mineralogical paper by Charles Hatchett: Nicholson's Journal, 2nd series (1802) 2, pp. 78-91, 129-138.
110. Unpublished draft note from Banks to Nicholson, 4 June 1802, British Library Add. MS 33981, f. 28.
111. Nicholson to Banks, 28 June 1802, British Library Add. MS 33981, ff. 31-33, published in Banks Correspondence, op. cit. (40), pp. 206-208.
112. Royal Society Council Minutes, 15 July 1802, Royal Society Archives, CMO.
113. Brock and Meadows, op. cit. (8), pp. 89-109.
114. Anthony Carlisle, John Symmonds, 21 May 1815, Royal Literary Fund Collection, British Library, Loan 96 RLF 1/208.
115. New Monthly Magazine (1815) 4, p. 77.