Commercial scientific journals and their editors in Edinburgh, 1819–32

What is it about?

This paper explores the editorial policies and practices of three scientific journal published in Edinburgh in the first half of the nineteenth century. The first of these was the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal (1819–26), and its continuation as the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal (1826–54). This was edited until 1824 by Robert Jameson, Edinburgh’s professor of natural history, and David Brewster, natural philosopher and scientific writer and editor. Brewster left in 1824 to found his own journal, the Edinburgh Journal of Science (1824–32). The third journal published in Edinburgh in this period was the Edinburgh Journal of Natural and Geographical Science (1829–31), edited by Henry H. Cheek and William Ainsworth, two medical students at the University of Edinburgh. All three journals were direct competitors, being strikingly similar in form and content. As well as competing with his journal for readers and authors, Cheek and Ainsworth also used their journal to directly attack Jameson in print. This paper sheds new light on the ways editorship of these journals was used not only to consolidate and extend circles of patronage in early nineteenth-century science, but also to challenge existing centres of authority.

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