The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (SDUK) was founded in London in 1826, mainly at the instigation of Whig MP Henry Brougham, with the object of publishing information to people who were unable to obtain formal teaching or who preferred self-education. It was a largely Whig organisation, and published inexpensive texts intended to adapt scientific and similarly high-minded material for the rapidly-expanding reading public over twenty years until it was disbanded in 1846.[1]
Lecture-Hall of the Greenwich Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge at its opening on 15 February 1843
Henry Brougham considered that mass education was an essential prerequisite for political reform. In October 1824 he contributed an article on "scientific education of the people" to the Whig Edinburgh Review, in which he argued that popular education would be greatly enhanced by the encouragement of cheap publications to complement the numerous recently founded provincial mechanics' institutes. The following year a version of this article was issued as a pamphlet entitled Practical Observations upon the Education of the People Addressed to the Working Classes and Their Employers, [2] selling at least 19 editions. In April 1825 Brougham set about trying to found a society to produce cheap educational books, although it was not until November 1826 that the SDUK was formally founded.[3] One of those present at the first meeting was the philosopher James Mill, and the founding committee included many Fellows of the Royal Society and Members of Parliament, as well as twelve founding committee members of the newly formed University College London.[4]
Aims
SDUK publications were intended for the working class and the middle class, as an antidote to the more radical output of the pauper presses. The Society set out to achieve this by acting as an intermediary between authors and publishers by launching several series of publications. Its printers included Baldwin & Cradock, later succeeded by Charles Knight. The SDUK commissioned work and dealt with the printers, and finally distributed the publications; profits were used to continue the Society's work. By using the new technologies of mass production, such as steam presses and stereotype, the Society and its printers kept costs low and were able to sell the books at much cheaper prices than was usual.[5]
The Society was not without opposition, and the Literary Gazette mounted a campaign on behalf of the book trade, supported by publications such as the Royal Lady's Magazine, who complained in the early 1830s that:
Few persons are aware that the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge have done, and are still doing, more to ruin the Book trade than all the change of times, the want of money, the weight of taxes, and even the law of Libel have accomplished; yet they – a committee of Noblemen and pretended Patriots – are permitted to go on in their unfeeling, nay, considering the hundreds of thousands engaged in the Book trade, we may add brutal, career, without interruption.[6]
Activities
"A Box of Useful Knowledge" (1832), artist unknown. The image portrays Brougham as Lord Chancellor, with SDUK and other publications inside.
The SDUK publishing programme began with the Library of Useful Knowledge.[7] Sold for sixpence and published fortnightly, its books focused on scientific topics. Like many other works in the new genre of popular science—such as the Bridgewater Treatises and Humphry Davy's Consolations in Travel—the books of the Library of Useful Knowledge imbued different scientific fields with concepts of progress: uniformitarianism in geology, the nebular hypothesis in astronomy, and the scala naturae in the life sciences. According to historian James A. Secord, such works met a demand for "general concepts and simple laws", and in the process helped establish the authority of professional science and specialised scientific disciplines.[8]
The first volume of the Library of Useful Knowledge, an introduction to the series by Brougham on the "objects, advantages and pleasures of science", sold over 33,000 copies by the end of 1829. Despite the initial success of the series, however, it soon became clear that it was too demanding for many readers, and the Society began to offer more varied and attractive publications, starting with the Library of Entertaining Knowledge (1829–38) and the Penny Magazine (1832–45), a lavishly illustrated[9] weekly that achieved unprecedented success, with sales in excess of 200,000 copies in the first year.[10] The scope and scale of the Society's activities expanded further over the following decade, and included the production of a Penny Cyclopaedia (1833–43) in 27 volumes.
Although sales of these publications may have been more among the middle- than the working-classes,[11] the Society had a significant role in pioneering "the idea of cheap, improving publications, freely and easily available, well produced and distributed on a scale hitherto unknown," and became iconic of the "March of Intellect".[12] The publisher Charles Knight bears much of the credit for the success that SDUK publications had; he engaged in extensive promotional campaigns, and worked to improve the readability of the sometimes abstruse material.[13]
The Society's continuing commitment to the high intellectual standards with which it was conceived probably contributed to its ultimate decline, as subscribers and sale of publications fell away. The Biographical Dictionary begun in 1842 was immensely ambitious and contributed to the Society's demise.[14]
Farmers Series, which included works by William Youatt on the dog, the horse, cattle, and sheep (1834–37)[16]
Biographical Dictionary (1842–44)
Maps, primarily in a two-volume set, and prepared to a very high standard (many drawn by W.B. Clarke, architect). The Society was a pioneer in utilising "volunteered geographic information".[17]
In popular culture
Thomas Love Peacock satirised the SDUK in 1831 in Crotchet Castle as the 'Steam Intellect Society':[18] a vicarage is almost set on fire by a "cook taking it into her head to study hydrostatics, in a sixpenny tract, published by the Steam Intellect Society".[19]
In the Notes to Anthony Trollope's book, Framley Parsonage, published by Oxford University Press as a World's Classic in 1980, P. D. Edwards writes that Trollope's character, Lord Boanerges, "may have been modelled in some respects on Lord Brougham.... founder of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge".
References to the Society are rare in the modern era, but within Steampunk culture, it is not entirely uncommon to refer to the Society itself and/or its better-known publications in an attempt to lend Victorian verisimilitude. The in-house publishing organ of the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles is called the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Information; while many communities in North America have established Societies for Learning in Retirement which are partially modelled along the same lines with the goal of disseminating knowledge amongst people who, although retired, are still interested in continuing to learn.
The Blackwood Gallery, a contemporary art gallery at the University of Toronto Mississauga, has published a series of free print and PDF broadsheets since 2018, which adopt the SDUK moniker. These publications reflect on contemporary issues in the arts, humanities, and social sciences by questioning the nature of “useful knowledge,” in dialogue with the history of the SDUK.[20]
Related societies
An American group of the same name was founded as part of the Lyceum movement in the United States in 1829. Its Boston branch sponsored lectures by such speakers as Ralph Waldo Emerson and was active from 1829 to 1947.[21] In 1838 and 1839, an American Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge published a fifty-volume set of books called The American School Library.[22]Henry David Thoreau cites the Society in his essay "Walking" in which he jestingly proposes a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Ignorance.[23]
References
Citations
^Smith, Harold (1974). The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, 1826–1846: A Social and Bibliographical Evaluation. Halifax, N.S.: Dalhousie University Press.
^Practical Observations upon the Education of the People Addressed to the Working Classes and Their Employers
^Topham, Jonathan R. (2007). ‘Publishing 'Popular Science' in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain’ in Science in the Marketplace: Nineteenth-Century Sites and Experiences, ed. by Fyfe, Aileen, and Lightman, Bernard. Chicago: Chicago University Press. pp. 160-61.
^Smith, Harold (1974). The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, 1826–1846: A Social and Bibliographical Evaluation. Halifax, N.S.: Dalhousie University Press. pp. 46–47.
^James A. Secord (2000). Visions of Science: Books and Readers at the Dawn of the Victorian Age. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 14-19.
^Library of Useful Knowledge (Baldwin & Craddock; then Charles Knight) - Book Series List, publishinghistory.com. Retrieved 14 June 2018.
^James A. Secord (2000). Visions of Science: Books and Readers at the Dawn of the Victorian Age. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp 55–62; quotation from p 55.
^Anderson, Patricia (1991).The Printed Image and the Transformation of Popular Culture, 1790–1860. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
^Bennett, Scott (1982). 'Revolutions in Thought: Serial Publication and the Mass Market for Reading.' In The Victorian Periodical Press: Samplings and Soundings, ed. Shattock, Joanne, and Wolff, Michael. Leicester: Leicester University Press. pp. 225-57.
^Webb, R. K. (1955). The British Working-Class Reader, 1790-1848: Literary and Social Tension. London: Allen and Unwin. p. 72.
^Smith, Harold (1974). The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, 1826–1846: A Social and Bibliographical Evaluation. Halifax, N.S.: Dalhousie University Press. p. 37.
^James A. Secord (2000). Visions of Science: Books and Readers at the Dawn of the Victorian Age. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp 48–50
^Smith, Harold (1974). The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, 1826–1846: A Social and Bibliographical Evaluation. Halifax, N.S.: Dalhousie University Press. pp.13–14, 33.
^Smith, Harold (1974). The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, 1826–1846: A Social and Bibliographical Evaluation. Halifax, N.S.: Dalhousie University Press. pp. 29–36.
^Tim St. Onge, Maps for the Masses: Geography in the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, Library of Congress blog, 13 July 2016.
^B. Wilson, Decency and Disorder (London 2007) p. 377
^T S Peacock, Nightmare Abbey and Crotchet Castle (London 1947) P. 106
^"Publications". Blackwood Gallery. Retrieved 27 April 2020.
^Helen R. Deese and Guy R. Woodall (1986). "A Calendar of Lectures Presented by the Boston Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (1829–1847)". Studies in the American Renaissance: 17–67. JSTOR 30227545.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: uses authors parameter (link)
^Barnard, Henry (1865). "The American Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge". The American Journal of Education. 15: 239–245. Retrieved 20 June 2020.
Patricia Anderson, The Printed Image and the Transformation of Popular Culture, 1790–1860. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991.
Ian J. Barrow, 'India for the Working Classes: The Maps of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge,' Modern Asian Studies 38 (2004): 677–702.
Scott Bennett, 'Revolutions in Thought: Serial Publication and the Mass Market for Reading.' In The Victorian Periodical Press: Samplings and Soundings, ed. Shattock, Joanne, and Wolff, Michael. Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1982. pp. 225-57.
Mead T. Cain, 'The Maps of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge: A Publishing History', Imago Mundi, Vol. 46 (1994), pp. 151–167.
Valerie Gray, Charles Knight: Educator, Publisher, Writer. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006.
Monica C Grobel, 'The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge 1826-1846' (Unpublished MA diss., 4 vols, London University, 1933).
Thomas Palmelund Johansen. 'The World Wide Web of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge: On the Global Circulation of Broughamite Educational Literature, 1826–1848,' Victorian Periodicals Review 50 (2017): 703–20.
Richard Johnson, '"Really Useful Knowledge:" Radical Education and Working-Class Culture 1790–1848.' In Working-Class Culture: Studies in History and Theory, ed. by John Clarke, Chas Crichter, and Richard Johnson (London: Hutchinson, 1979), 75–102.
Janet Percival, 'The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, 1826–1848: A handlist of the Society's correspondence and papers', The Library of University College London, Occasional Papers, No 5 1978, ISSN 0309-3352
James A. Secord. Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. ISBN0-226-74410-8
James A. Secord. Visions of Science: Books and Readers at the Dawn of the Victorian Age. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. ISBN 0-19-967526-5
Harold Smith. The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, 1826–1846: A Social and Bibliographical Evaluation. Halifax, N.S.: Dalhousie University Press, 1974.
Jonathan R. Topham, ‘Science and Popular Education in the 1830s: The Role of the Bridgewater Treatises’, British Journal for the History of Science, 25 (1992), 397-430. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0007087400029587
Jonathan R. Topham. ‘Publishing "Popular Science" in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain.’ In Science in the Marketplace: Nineteenth-Century Sites and Experiences, ed. by Aileen Fyfe and Bernard Lightman. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2007. pp. 135-168.
University College London houses the archives of the Society and a virtually a complete set of publications.
Webb, R. K. The British Working-Class Reader, 1790-1848: Literary and Social Tension. London: Allen and Unwin, 1955.
Works by or about Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge at Internet Archive
au:"Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge" at WorldCat
January 13, 2023
society, diffusion, useful, knowledge, sduk, founded, london, 1826, mainly, instigation, whig, henry, brougham, with, object, publishing, information, people, were, unable, obtain, formal, teaching, preferred, self, education, largely, whig, organisation, publ. The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge SDUK was founded in London in 1826 mainly at the instigation of Whig MP Henry Brougham with the object of publishing information to people who were unable to obtain formal teaching or who preferred self education It was a largely Whig organisation and published inexpensive texts intended to adapt scientific and similarly high minded material for the rapidly expanding reading public over twenty years until it was disbanded in 1846 1 Contents 1 Origins 2 Aims 3 Activities 4 Main publication series 15 5 In popular culture 6 Related societies 7 References 7 1 Citations 7 2 Sources 8 See also 9 External linksOrigins Edit Lecture Hall of the Greenwich Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge at its opening on 15 February 1843 Henry Brougham considered that mass education was an essential prerequisite for political reform In October 1824 he contributed an article on scientific education of the people to the Whig Edinburgh Review in which he argued that popular education would be greatly enhanced by the encouragement of cheap publications to complement the numerous recently founded provincial mechanics institutes The following year a version of this article was issued as a pamphlet entitled Practical Observations upon the Education of the People Addressed to the Working Classes and Their Employers 2 selling at least 19 editions In April 1825 Brougham set about trying to found a society to produce cheap educational books although it was not until November 1826 that the SDUK was formally founded 3 One of those present at the first meeting was the philosopher James Mill and the founding committee included many Fellows of the Royal Society and Members of Parliament as well as twelve founding committee members of the newly formed University College London 4 Aims EditSDUK publications were intended for the working class and the middle class as an antidote to the more radical output of the pauper presses The Society set out to achieve this by acting as an intermediary between authors and publishers by launching several series of publications Its printers included Baldwin amp Cradock later succeeded by Charles Knight The SDUK commissioned work and dealt with the printers and finally distributed the publications profits were used to continue the Society s work By using the new technologies of mass production such as steam presses and stereotype the Society and its printers kept costs low and were able to sell the books at much cheaper prices than was usual 5 The Society was not without opposition and the Literary Gazette mounted a campaign on behalf of the book trade supported by publications such as the Royal Lady s Magazine who complained in the early 1830s that Few persons are aware that the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge have done and are still doing more to ruin the Book trade than all the change of times the want of money the weight of taxes and even the law of Libel have accomplished yet they a committee of Noblemen and pretended Patriots are permitted to go on in their unfeeling nay considering the hundreds of thousands engaged in the Book trade we may add brutal career without interruption 6 Activities Edit A Box of Useful Knowledge 1832 artist unknown The image portrays Brougham as Lord Chancellor with SDUK and other publications inside The SDUK publishing programme began with the Library of Useful Knowledge 7 Sold for sixpence and published fortnightly its books focused on scientific topics Like many other works in the new genre of popular science such as the Bridgewater Treatises and Humphry Davy s Consolations in Travel the books of the Library of Useful Knowledge imbued different scientific fields with concepts of progress uniformitarianism in geology the nebular hypothesis in astronomy and the scala naturae in the life sciences According to historian James A Secord such works met a demand for general concepts and simple laws and in the process helped establish the authority of professional science and specialised scientific disciplines 8 The first volume of the Library of Useful Knowledge an introduction to the series by Brougham on the objects advantages and pleasures of science sold over 33 000 copies by the end of 1829 Despite the initial success of the series however it soon became clear that it was too demanding for many readers and the Society began to offer more varied and attractive publications starting with the Library of Entertaining Knowledge 1829 38 and the Penny Magazine 1832 45 a lavishly illustrated 9 weekly that achieved unprecedented success with sales in excess of 200 000 copies in the first year 10 The scope and scale of the Society s activities expanded further over the following decade and included the production of a Penny Cyclopaedia 1833 43 in 27 volumes Although sales of these publications may have been more among the middle than the working classes 11 the Society had a significant role in pioneering the idea of cheap improving publications freely and easily available well produced and distributed on a scale hitherto unknown and became iconic of the March of Intellect 12 The publisher Charles Knight bears much of the credit for the success that SDUK publications had he engaged in extensive promotional campaigns and worked to improve the readability of the sometimes abstruse material 13 The Society s continuing commitment to the high intellectual standards with which it was conceived probably contributed to its ultimate decline as subscribers and sale of publications fell away The Biographical Dictionary begun in 1842 was immensely ambitious and contributed to the Society s demise 14 Main publication series 15 Edit Map of Naples published by SDUK Map of Africa published by SDUK Library of Useful Knowledge 1827 46 British Almanac 1828 1914 and associated Companion Library of Entertaining Knowledge 1829 38 Working Man s Companion 1831 32 Quarterly Journal of Education 1831 35 Penny Magazine 1832 45 Gallery of Portraits 1832 34 Penny Cyclopaedia 1833 43 Library for the Young 1834 40 Farmers Series which included works by William Youatt on the dog the horse cattle and sheep 1834 37 16 Biographical Dictionary 1842 44 Maps primarily in a two volume set and prepared to a very high standard many drawn by W B Clarke architect The Society was a pioneer in utilising volunteered geographic information 17 In popular culture EditThomas Love Peacock satirised the SDUK in 1831 in Crotchet Castle as the Steam Intellect Society 18 a vicarage is almost set on fire by a cook taking it into her head to study hydrostatics in a sixpenny tract published by the Steam Intellect Society 19 In the Notes to Anthony Trollope s book Framley Parsonage published by Oxford University Press as a World s Classic in 1980 P D Edwards writes that Trollope s character Lord Boanerges may have been modelled in some respects on Lord Brougham founder of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge References to the Society are rare in the modern era but within Steampunk culture it is not entirely uncommon to refer to the Society itself and or its better known publications in an attempt to lend Victorian verisimilitude The in house publishing organ of the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles is called the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Information while many communities in North America have established Societies for Learning in Retirement which are partially modelled along the same lines with the goal of disseminating knowledge amongst people who although retired are still interested in continuing to learn The Blackwood Gallery a contemporary art gallery at the University of Toronto Mississauga has published a series of free print and PDF broadsheets since 2018 which adopt the SDUK moniker These publications reflect on contemporary issues in the arts humanities and social sciences by questioning the nature of useful knowledge in dialogue with the history of the SDUK 20 Related societies EditAn American group of the same name was founded as part of the Lyceum movement in the United States in 1829 Its Boston branch sponsored lectures by such speakers as Ralph Waldo Emerson and was active from 1829 to 1947 21 In 1838 and 1839 an American Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge published a fifty volume set of books called The American School Library 22 Henry David Thoreau cites the Society in his essay Walking in which he jestingly proposes a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Ignorance 23 References EditCitations Edit Smith Harold 1974 The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge 1826 1846 A Social and Bibliographical Evaluation Halifax N S Dalhousie University Press Practical Observations upon the Education of the People Addressed to the Working Classes and Their Employers Topham Jonathan R 2007 Publishing Popular Science in Early Nineteenth Century Britain in Science in the Marketplace Nineteenth Century Sites and Experiences ed by Fyfe Aileen and Lightman Bernard Chicago Chicago University Press pp 160 61 Smith Harold 1974 The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge 1826 1846 A Social and Bibliographical Evaluation Halifax N S Dalhousie University Press pp 46 47 James A Secord 2000 Visions of Science Books and Readers at the Dawn of the Victorian Age Chicago University of Chicago Press pp 14 19 The Royal Lady s Magazine Library of Useful Knowledge Baldwin amp Craddock then Charles Knight Book Series List publishinghistory com Retrieved 14 June 2018 James A Secord 2000 Visions of Science Books and Readers at the Dawn of the Victorian Age Chicago University of Chicago Press pp 55 62 quotation from p 55 Anderson Patricia 1991 The Printed Image and the Transformation of Popular Culture 1790 1860 Oxford Clarendon Press Bennett Scott 1982 Revolutions in Thought Serial Publication and the Mass Market for Reading In The Victorian Periodical Press Samplings and Soundings ed Shattock Joanne and Wolff Michael Leicester Leicester University Press pp 225 57 Webb R K 1955 The British Working Class Reader 1790 1848 Literary and Social Tension London Allen and Unwin p 72 Smith Harold 1974 The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge 1826 1846 A Social and Bibliographical Evaluation Halifax N S Dalhousie University Press p 37 James A Secord 2000 Visions of Science Books and Readers at the Dawn of the Victorian Age Chicago University of Chicago Press pp 48 50 Smith Harold 1974 The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge 1826 1846 A Social and Bibliographical Evaluation Halifax N S Dalhousie University Press pp 13 14 33 Smith Harold 1974 The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge 1826 1846 A Social and Bibliographical Evaluation Halifax N S Dalhousie University Press pp 29 36 Clarke Ernest 1900 Youatt William In Lee Sidney ed Dictionary of National Biography Vol 63 London Smith Elder amp Co Tim St Onge Maps for the Masses Geography in the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge Library of Congress blog 13 July 2016 B Wilson Decency and Disorder London 2007 p 377 T S Peacock Nightmare Abbey and Crotchet Castle London 1947 P 106 Publications Blackwood Gallery Retrieved 27 April 2020 Helen R Deese and Guy R Woodall 1986 A Calendar of Lectures Presented by the Boston Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge 1829 1847 Studies in the American Renaissance 17 67 JSTOR 30227545 a href Template Cite journal html title Template Cite journal cite journal a CS1 maint uses authors parameter link Barnard Henry 1865 The American Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge The American Journal of Education 15 239 245 Retrieved 20 June 2020 Thoreau s Walking 3 Archived 4 July 2010 at the Wayback Machine Sources Edit Patricia Anderson The Printed Image and the Transformation of Popular Culture 1790 1860 Oxford Clarendon Press 1991 Ian J Barrow India for the Working Classes The Maps of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge Modern Asian Studies 38 2004 677 702 Scott Bennett Revolutions in Thought Serial Publication and the Mass Market for Reading In The Victorian Periodical Press Samplings and Soundings ed Shattock Joanne and Wolff Michael Leicester Leicester University Press 1982 pp 225 57 Mead T Cain The Maps of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge A Publishing History Imago Mundi Vol 46 1994 pp 151 167 Valerie Gray Charles Knight Educator Publisher Writer Aldershot Ashgate 2006 Monica C Grobel The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge 1826 1846 Unpublished MA diss 4 vols London University 1933 Thomas Palmelund Johansen The World Wide Web of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge On the Global Circulation of Broughamite Educational Literature 1826 1848 Victorian Periodicals Review 50 2017 703 20 Richard Johnson Really Useful Knowledge Radical Education and Working Class Culture 1790 1848 In Working Class Culture Studies in History and Theory ed by John Clarke Chas Crichter and Richard Johnson London Hutchinson 1979 75 102 Janet Percival The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge 1826 1848 A handlist of the Society s correspondence and papers The Library of University College London Occasional Papers No 5 1978 ISSN 0309 3352 James A Secord Victorian Sensation The Extraordinary Publication Reception and Secret Authorship ofVestiges of the Natural History of Creation Chicago University of Chicago Press 2000 ISBN 0 226 74410 8 James A Secord Visions of Science Books and Readers at the Dawn of the Victorian Age Chicago University of Chicago Press 2000 ISBN 0 19 967526 5 Harold Smith The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge 1826 1846 A Social and Bibliographical Evaluation Halifax N S Dalhousie University Press 1974 Jonathan R Topham Science and Popular Education in the 1830s The Role of the Bridgewater Treatises British Journal for the History of Science 25 1992 397 430 http dx doi org 10 1017 S0007087400029587 Jonathan R Topham Publishing Popular Science in Early Nineteenth Century Britain In Science in the Marketplace Nineteenth Century Sites and Experiences ed by Aileen Fyfe and Bernard Lightman Chicago Chicago University Press 2007 pp 135 168 University College London houses the archives of the Society and a virtually a complete set of publications Webb R K The British Working Class Reader 1790 1848 Literary and Social Tension London Allen and Unwin 1955 See also EditSee also Category Committee members of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful KnowledgeExternal links EditBloomsbury Institutions SDUK Works by or about Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge at Internet Archive au Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge at WorldCat Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge amp oldid 1127200242, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,
