Journals, learned societies and money: Philosophical transactions, ca. 1750-1900

Notes and Records

Volumn 69, Issue 3, 2015, Pages 277-299

  Fyfe, Aileen ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Finances; Journal profits; Learned societies; Publishing; Royal Society; Science journals

Indexed keywords

ECONOMICS; HEALTH CARE ORGANIZATION; HISTORY; PUBLICATION; PUBLISHING; UNITED KINGDOM;

HISTORY, 18TH CENTURY; HISTORY, 19TH CENTURY; LONDON; PERIODICALS AS TOPIC; PUBLISHING; SOCIETIES, SCIENTIFIC;

EID: 84939180802     PISSN: 00359149     EISSN: 17430178     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1098/rsnr.2015.0032     Document Type: Review

References (138)

1. Royal Society archives [hereafter RS], Council Minutes (Printed) [hereafter CMP] vol. 7, 20 June 1895.
2. Report of the Select Committee on Postage (1837-38), pp. 314-329, at p. 315.
3. W. H. Brock, 'The development of commercial science journals in Victorian Britain', in The development of science publishing in Europe (ed. A. J. Meadows), pp. 95-122 (Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1980)
4. W. H. Brock and A. J. Meadows, The lamp of learning: Taylor & Francis and the development of science publishing (Taylor & Francis, London, 1998)
5. M. Baldwin, 'The shifting ground of Nature: establishing an organ of scientific communication in Britain, 1869-1900', History of Science 50, 125-154 (2012)
6. idem, Making Nature: the history of a scientific journal (University of Chicago Press, 2015).
7. Taylor would not have referred to learned society periodicals as 'journals'; see J. R. Topham, 'Anthologizing the book of nature: the circulation of knowledge and the origins of the scientific journal in late Georgian Britain', in The circulation of knowledge between Britain, India, and China (ed. B. Lightman and G. McOuat), pp. 119-152 (Brill, Boston, 2013).
8. RS CMP/7, 20 June 1895.
9. On Oldenburg, see A. Johns, The nature of the book: print and knowledge in the making (University of Chicago Press, 1998)
10. idem, 'Miscellaneous methods: authors, societies and journals in early modern England', Br. J. Hist. Sci. 33, 159-186 (2000)
11. M. B. Hall, Henry Oldenburg: shaping the Royal Society (Oxford University Press, 2002).
12. N. Moxham, 'Fit for print: developing an institutional model of scientific periodical publishing in England, 1665-ca. 1714', Notes Rec. 69, 241-260 (2015) (http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.2015.0035).
13. RS Council Minutes (Originals) [hereafter RS CMO], vol. 4, 19 March 1751/2.
14. The data underlying this graph are far from perfect. Figures have been extracted from Council Minutes until formal accounts were presented, from 1833 onwards. In the earlier period some figures are missing, and it is sometimes difficult to attribute bills or receipts to specific volumes of the journal with certainty. Cost data are much more complete than sales data. Moreover, for most of the post-1833 period, the sales income from Proceedings is inextricably combined with that from Transactions, and thus the deficit shown here for Transactions is an underestimate. Adjustment for inflation, using 1900 as a baseline, was made by using the real price comparator (RPI) at 'Measuring Worth', http://www.measuringworth.com (accessed 7 May 2015).
15. On the merits of 'following the money', see C. Andersen, J. Bek-Thomsen and P. C. Kjærgaard, 'The money trail: a new historiography for networks, patronage, and scientific careers', Isis 103, 310-315 (2012).
16. idem, 'Medicine and the Victorian scientific press', in Medical journals and medical knowledge: historical essays (ed. W. F. Bynum, S. Lock and R. Porter), pp. 70-89 (Routledge, London, 1992)
17. W. H. Brock, William Crookes (1832-1919) and the commercialization of science (Ashgate, Aldershot, 2008).
18. On the early nineteenth century, see also J. R. Topham, 'The mirror of literature, amusement and instruction and cheap miscellanies in early-nineteenth-century Britain', in Science in the nineteenth-century periodical (ed. G. Cantor, G. Dawson, G. Gooday, R. Noakes, S. Shuttleworth and J. R. Topham), pp. 37-66 (Cambridge University Press, 2004)
19. J. R. Topham, 'John Limbird, Thomas Byerley, and the production of cheap periodicals in the 1820s', Book Hist. 8, 75-106 (2005).
20. On evangelical publishing societies, see L. Howsam, Cheap Bibles: nineteenth-century publishing and the British and Foreign Bible Society (Cambridge University Press, 1991)
21. D. P. Nord, Faith in reading: religious publishing and the birth of mass media in America (Oxford University Press, New York, 2004)
22. A. Fyfe, Science and salvation: evangelicals and popular science publishing in Victorian Britain (University of Chicago Press, 2004).
23. On the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, see V. Gray, Charles Knight: educator, publisher, writer (Ashgate, Aldershot, 2006)
24. R. Kinraide, 'The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge and the democratization of learning in early nineteenth-century Britain', PhD thesis, University of Wisconsin-Madison (2006).
25. The standard histories of learned societies routinely include a section or chapter on the publications, but rarely discuss the actual commercial or editorial business involved. On the problems of printing historical documents, see C. Johnson, 'The Camden Society, 1838-1938', Trans. R. Hist. Soc. 22, 23-38 (1940).
26. University presses faced similar tensions between finances and scholarship, as can be seen in D. McKitterick, Scholarship and commerce, 1698-1872 (Cambridge University Press, 1998)
27. S. Eliot (ed.), The history of Oxford University Press, vol. 2 (1780 to 1896). (Oxford University Press, 2013).
28. S. Kusukawa, 'The Historia Piscium (1686)', Notes Rec. R. Soc. 54, 179-197 (2000).
29. R. M. MacLeod, 'The Royal Society and the government grant: notes on the administration of scientific reserach, 1849-1914', Hist. J. 14, 323-358 (1971)
30. M. B. Hall, All scientists now: the Royal Society in the nineteenth century (Cambridge University Press, 2002), chs 4-6.
31. The Record of the Royal Society of London, 3rd edn (The Royal Society, London, 1912), p. 270. The earliest surviving minutes seem to be from 1834.
32. Record, op. cit. (note 17), pp. 275-278; H. Gay, 'A questionable project: Herbert McLeod and the making of the fourth series of the Royal Society Catalogue of Scientific Papers, 1901-25', Ann. Sci. 70, 149-174 (2013).
33. For instance, RS CMO/3, 3 February 1729 and 9 May 1730.
34. Both the admission fees and the 'compounding' fees were treated as ordinary income, despite repeated entreaties from finance committees that some portion of the compounded fees be invested. Finance Committee, RS CMB/42/10 fos 58-60, January-February 1834.
35. RS CMP/2, 14 January 1847.
36. The Finance Committee discussions are in RS CMB/86/A, 12 December 1846 to 11 January 1847. None of the 'business astronomers' discussed by Will Ashworth, some of whom had actuarial skills, were involved (Baily had died in 1844)
37. W. J. Ashworth, 'The calculating eye: Baily, Herschel, Babbage and the business of astronomy', Br. J. Hist. Sci. 27, 409-441 (1994).
38. Appendix I, Report of the Finance Committee, recorded in Council Minutes 14 January 1847, RS CMP/2.
39. The enormous and expensive Catalogue of Scientific Papers, however, was accounted separately.
40. Salaries were paid in November every year, and Council Minutes record names, roles and payments. For 1890s, see, for instance, 1 November 1894, RS CMP/7.
41. '[Report of the Secretary and Treasurer of the Royal Society]', Proc. R. Soc. Lond. 3, 235-244 (1830-37), at p. 241.
42. Finance Committee report, recorded in Council Minutes 17 May 1877, RS CMP/4.
43. RS CMO/5, 14 February 1765.
44. A. Fyfe, 'Societies as publishers: the Religious Tract Society in the mid-nineteenth century', Publishing Hist. 58, 5-42 (2005).
45. Except when Transactions was printed in Oxford during the plague years; see Robert Moray to Henry Oldenburg, 10 and 11 October 1665, in The correspondence of Henry Oldenburg (ed. A. R. Hall and M. B. Hall), vol. 2, pp. 560 and 563 (University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI, 1965-1986).
46. See also D. A. Kronick, 'Notes on the printing history of the early "Philosophical Transactions"', Libraries Cult. 25, 243-268 (1990).
47. Printers' names did not appear on the printed issue, but bills for payment, explicitly 'for printing the Transactions' appear in Council Minutes. Richardson printed Transactions from at least 10 May 1753 until 15 May 1760 (he died in 1761), RS CMO/4. William Bowyer was first recorded as printer of Transactions on 18 November 1762, RS CMO/4. Richardson and Bowyer are both in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography [hereafter ODNB].
48. The ODNB entry on Nichols (in 'Nichols family') gives an overview of the literature on this well-known book trade figure.
49. RS CMO/7, 16 December 1779 and 1 February 1781.
50. RS CMO/7, 25 January 1787. Pages, and some title pages, had been omitted.
51. RS CMO/7, 25 June 1789.
52. RS CMO/7, 9 July 1789.
53. Banks to Nichols, 28 December 1791, in N. Chambers, The scientific correspondence of Sir Joseph Banks, 1765-1820 (Pickering & Chatto, London, 2007), vol. 4, p. 94; compare with RS CMO/8, 22 December 1791.
54. On Bulmer, see P. Isaac, William Bulmer: the fine printer in context, 1757-1830 (Bain & Williams, London, 1993).
55. Committee for Printing Philosophical Transactions, 25 January 1828, RS CMB/1/24/1.
56. Committee for Printing Philosophical Transactions, 28 January 1828, RS CMB/1/24/1.
57. The printers involved were William Clowes, Richard Taylor, Priestley & Weal, James Moyes and R Watts. RS Domestic Manuscripts [hereafter RS DM] 1/95 Memorandum of printing estimates; RS DM/1/94 Memorandum of Watts' printing estimates.
58. 'Memorandum of questions to printers', n.d. (late January 1828), RS DM/1/96 (an abbreviated version is at RS DM/1/91).
59. 'Circular to the printers', n.d. (late January 1828), RS DM/1/85.
60. For the 1846 re-tendering (in which Taylor was successful), see RS CMB/86/A, 12, 14 and 17 December 1846; RS CMP/2, 17 December 1846.
61. Appendix I, Finance Committee report to Council, RS CMP/2, 14 January 1847. The committee compared the costs in 1835-40 with those in 1841-46, and because the 1840s costs were lower, it concluded that costs were falling. The volumes in the early 1840s were indeed shorter than their predecessors.
62. For an overview of the technology, see M. Twyman, Printing 1770-1970: an illustrated history of its development and uses in England (British Library, London, 1998)
63. A. Fyfe, Steam-powered knowledge: William Chambers and the business of publishing, 1820-1860 (University of Chicago Press, 2012), ch. 1.
64. For the economics, see A. Weedon, Victorian publishing: the economics of book production for a mass market, 1836-1916 (Ashgate, Aldershot, 2003).
65. Sabine to Rosse, recorded in RS CMP/2, 19 February 1852.
66. RS CMP/3, 23 February 1860.
67. From the 1850s the Society's Secretary kept a 'Register of Papers' (MS/421) that recorded all papers submitted and their progress (or not) through the process of being read, refereed, and approved for printing.
68. Finance Committee report to Council, RS CMP/2, 14 January 1847.
69. Harrison & Sons were appointed on 7 June 1877, RS CMP/4. Scant details of the tender process survive in the minutes of the Library Committee for 1876-77, RS CMB/47/3, supplemented by RS CMP/4, 26 October 1876. See also 30 November 1876. Among the unsuccessful were Taylor & Francis and Eyre & Spottiswoode.
70. Evans to Kelvin, 23 April 1894, recorded in RS CMP/7, 26 April 1894.
71. The Basire family are in ODNB. The third James Basire died in May 1869. He had been paid 75 for engraving and lithography on 15 April 1869, RS CMP/3.
72. RS CMB/86/A, 12 December 1846.
73. Evans reported, 26 April 1894, RS CMP/7.
74. Council approved, 6 December 1894, RS CMP/7.
75. RS CMP/7, 26 April 1894. This was to be done before the paper had been accepted for reading before the Society.
76. RS CMP/7, 6 December 1894.
77. RS CMO/4, 19 March 1751/2.
78. RS DM/1/112.
79. RS CMO/4 19 March 1751/2.
80. RS Miscellaneous Manuscripts [hereafter MM] MM/3 f.65, 30 November 1798. Wilkinson wanted the 1791 volume, having been abroad at the time. Council insisted that, even so, he had had plenty of time to claim within the five-year deadline, RS CMO/8, 20 December 1798.
81. RS CMO/5, 15 July 1767 (375 copies for bookseller, 375 for Society); RS CMO/6, 9 July 1772 (400 copies for Society); RS CMO/7, 11 March 1779 (350 copies for bookseller).
82. The print run was 750 copies in 1766 (RS DM/1/101, 10 July 1766) and RS DM/1/112, 18 July 1766), 850 copies in 1787 (RS CMO/7, 20 December 1787, p. 289), 1000 copies when Bulmer took over (RS CMO/8, 22 December 1791) and 750 copies in 1808 (RS CMO/8, 11 February 1808).
83. The print run was 1000 copies when Taylor took over (RS CMO/10, 28 February 1828) and was reduced to 800 in 1898 (RS CMP/7, 20 January 1898).
84. This arrangement lasted from 1682 to 1687. RS Account Books [hereafter AB] AB/1/1/2 (1682), and T. Birch, The history of the Royal Society of London for improving of natural knowledge, from its first rise. In which papers hitherto not published, are inserted in their proper order, as a supplement to the Philosophical Transactions by Thomas Birch (A. Millar, London, 1756-57), vol. 4, pp. 170-171.
85. RS CMO/4, 4 July 1750 and 18 January 1753.
86. RS CMO/4, 17 November 1753 and 17 November 1757 ('into their own hands').
87. RS CMO/4, 25 June 1761 (BM, and the universities) and 12 December 1765 (the king).
88. Undated circulation figures [before 12 February 1846], RS CMB/86/A.
89. Finance Committee, RS CMB/86/A, ca. 1846.
90. RS CMB/47/3, 1 June 1875.
91. From 1897 the list of institutions was printed in the Year-book of the Royal Society.
92. The 1847 financial review set aside 250 a year for library purchases and a further 150 for binding, RS CMB/86/A, 4 January 1847. The annual accounts show that the library expenditure was actually below 300 a year until the end of the century. The Society's library holdings enabled it to take the lead on the Catalogue of Scientific Papers.
93. RS CMO/8, 15 July 1802.
94. A. Csiszar, 'Seriality and the search for order: scientific print and its problems during the late nineteenth century', Hist. Sci. 48, 399-434 (2010).
95. CMO/7, 11 February 1773; RS CMP/5, 21 March 1878.
96. Exceptions (from the 1908 Year-book of the Royal Society) include Durham, St Andrews, Maynooth and Edinburgh (several copies went to Edinburgh but not to the university).
97. RS CMO/4, 27 March 1751/2. In 1752, as well as a cut of sales, Davis also received a 20% commission for collating the printed sheets and stitching them into wrappers before delivery to the Society or sale. By 1772, but probably by the late 1760s, this had become part of the printer's role
98. see RS CMO/6, 9 July 1772.
99. RS CMO/4, 11 December 1755, notes the appointment of Davis & Reymers as 'Printers to this Society' (even though they seem not to have been doing the printing).
100. On discounts, see RS CMO/4, 27 March 1751/2 (proposal for 25%), RS CMO/5, 15 July 1767 (40%), RS CMO/7, and 24 February 1780 (15%). On the eighteenth-century book trade, see J. Feather, A history of British publishing (Routledge, London, 1988)
101. J. Raven, The business of books: booksellers and the English book trade 1450-1850 (Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 2007).
102. The relevant documents are RS DM/1/101 (10 July 1766), which include an outline proposal from Davis, and RS DM/1/112 (18 July 1766), which is a more detailed proposal. Davis & Reymers proposed to offer the Society either 300 copies at a negotiated price per issue, or at a set price of 4s. 6d. regardless of length. The latter arrangement would have seen the Society paying 67 10s. for its copies; Council minutes in the early 1760s suggest that the Society was usually out of pocket on Transactions by at least 120 per volume.
103. Davis & Reymers account, 24 November 1765, RS DM/1/102.
104. RS DM/1/112. Davis & Reymers did buy the stock; the payment is recorded in RS AB/1/1/11.
105. RS CMO/8, 4 February 1802.
106. Fellows could have them for one-third of the retail price, RS CMO/10, 5 June 1824. There was a further disposal effort (down to 20 copies) in 1828, RS CMO/10, 24 April 1828.
107. G. Nicol retired in 1825 and died in 1828. His son continued the bookselling business as G. & W. Nicol, but he lost the printing contract in February 1828. Council decided to have no bookseller on 14 May 1829, RS CMO/11. No reason was stated.
108. For Taylor handling sales, see, for instance, entries for 1835 in the Taylor 'Income and Expense Account, 1835-55' (held in the Taylor & Francis archive, St Bride's Printing Library). English Catalogue of Books 1863-72 (Sampson & Low, London, 1873; p. 435) lists Taylor & Francis as the distributor.
109. In the 1890s, English Catalogue of Books 1893 (Sampson & Low, London, 1894; p. 134) gives 'Burlington House', rather than Harrison & Sons the printer, but the Society's ledgers do record sales income received from Harrison.
110. RS CMP/8, 11 July 1902.
111. Undated circulation figures (before 12 February 1846), RS CMB/86/A.
112. 'Overview of Royal Society income from Transactions to 1765' (covering 1752 to 1765), undated document, RS DM/1/105. The Society received 965 from the eight volumes published in these years. The average retail price was just over 10s., and the bookseller's commission might have been 15%.
113. The sales income from publications is given in the annual accounts ( printed in Proceedings each November). Income from Proceedings is amalgamated with that for Transactions; it includes sales of all volumes during that year (not just the volume published in that year), which makes it non-trivial to divide by the known retail price of that year's volume. The trade discount at the time is unknown.
114. Undated circulation figures (before 12 February 1846), RS CMB/86/A. The figures cover the years 1835-44, so they presumably date from 1845 or early 1846.
115. RS CMP/7, 26 June, 1895 (Rayleigh to Treasury). Although, on the late survival of countryhouse physics
116. see S. Schaffer, 'Physics laboratories and the Victorian country house', in Making space for science: territorial themes in the shaping of knowledge (ed. C. Smith and J. Agar 149-180, Macmillan, Basingstoke 1998).
117. For instance, the parts of Philosophical Transactions for 1870 cost 3 8s. in total, and in 1871 3 15s. (from The English Catalogue of Books (ed. S. Low) (Sampson Low, London, 1863-1914), vol. 2, p. 435).
118. RS CMP7, 26 June 1895 (Rayleigh to Treasury).
119. The split was proposed on 18 March 1886, and was finally approved on 2 February 1887, RS CMP/6. The split was followed by a reorganization of the institutional distribution lists; see Report of Library Committee, recorded in RS CMP/6, 21 June 1888. Like individuals, many institutions wanted one series of Transactions but not both, and this may have enabled the print run to be reduced without significantly diminishing the number of beneficiaries; see RS CMP/7, 20 January 1898.
120. On Chemical News, see W. H. Brock, 'The making of an editor: the case of William Crookes', in Culture and science in the nineteenth-century media (ed. L. Henson, G. Cantor and S. Shuttleworth), pp. 189-198 (Ashgate, Aldershot, 2004).
121. Trübner was allowed a 10% discount, RS CMP/4, 17 June 1875. On Trübner (later part of Kegan Paul)
122. see L. Howsam, Kegan Paul, a Victorian imprint: publishers, books and cultural history (University of Toronto Press, 1999).
123. RS CMP/5, 24 May 1883. The Library Committee had originally proposed making 50 copies available for sale, RS CMP/4, 18 March 1875.
124. English Catalogue of Books (Sampson Low, London, 1893), p. 103. In 1894, the separate copy business was transferred to Dulau; see RS CMP/7, 25 October 1894.
125. RS CMP/7, 1 November 1894.
126. This was still true in the 1970s; see RS AB/2/20/3 Publications Account to 28 February 1977.
127. RS CMP/7, 20 June 1895.
128. RS CMP, 16 February 1899.
129. In 1930, just over 1500 was granted to other societies, and 1000 supported the Royal Society's publications. See the financial statement in Year-book of the Royal Society (1930), p. 185.
130. The twentieth-century story of the Royal Society's publishing finances will be the subject of a future paper.
131. The development of refereeing after 1832 is currently being investigated by both Alex Csiszar and Julie McDougall-Waters. I am grateful to them for letting me read their unpublished research, including A. Csiszar, The rise of the scientific journal in nineteenth-century France and Britain (in preparation). See also M. Baldwin, 'Credibility, peer review, and Nature, 1945-1990', Notes Rec. 69, 337-352 (2015) (http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.2015.0029).
132. On Nicholson, see I.Watts, ''We want no authors': William Nicholson and the contested role of the scientific journal in Britain, 1797-1813', Br. J. Hist. Sci. 47, 397-419 (2014).
133. RS DM/1/105 (n.d.) records total expenditure over this 11-year period as 2209, and payments from booksellers as 965. This may be the document requested by Council in January 1765, CMO/5, 14 February 1765.
134. 'The last ten years', Report of the Finance Committee, presented to Council on 14 January 1847, RS CMP/2.
135. 'The last five years', in Report of the Charter Committee, presented to Council on 18 June 1846, RS CMP/1.
136. Sabine (Treasurer) to Rosse (President), 17 January 1852, recorded in RS CMP/2, 19 February 1852.
137. Evans (Treasurer) to Kelvin (President), 23 April 1894, recorded in RS CMP/7, 26 April 1894. This figure includes the costs and income of Proceedings as well as of Transactions; production costs were provided separately, but not income.
138. Calculated from data supplied by the Royal Society's publishing division. The page counts are for text, not images; and the definition of an 'article' is sometimes inconsistent in the earlier period.