Science and the Public 355audience, not just by sections of the intellectual elite, such as the North
British Physicists or the Anglican clergy. Without doubt, the latter half of
the nineteenth century was marked by the establishment of the ideal of
the professional scientist as a replacement for the ideal of the gentleman
of science, in part thanks to the efforts of the scientifi c naturalists. But if it
was the age of the professionalization of science, it was also a period when
the popularization of science really came into its own and when the audi-
ence for scientifi c books, journals, and lectures grew by leaps and bounds.
The revolution in the fi rst half of the century in communications and
transportation, both in the vanguard of the economic sectors undergoing
industrialization, laid the groundwork for this growth of popular science
and its public. As James Secord has argued, “The steam- powered printing
machine, machine- made paper, public libraries, cheap woodcuts, stereo-
typing, religious tracts, secular education, the postal system, telegraphy,
and railway distribution played key parts in opening the fl oodgates to an
increased reading public.” Driven by technological advances, as well as
wider social developments, such as the explosion of the urban population,
changes in the book trade, and a rise in literacy rates, the number of book
titles increased steadily throughout the fi rst half of the century as the price
of books declined.^53
The establishment of a new market for popular science developed
slowly at fi rst. Though not always a commercial success, the appearance
of new scientifi c works in cheap nonfi ction series in the 1820s, such as
Henry Brougham’s Library of Useful Knowledge, sponsored by the Society
for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, revealed an untapped market and
encouraged a series of publishing experiments in the following decade. By
the time the Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation burst upon the scene
in 1844, causing a sensation, the anonymous author (Robert Chambers)
could take advantage of the new market for popular science and astutely
draw on his vast experience in commercial publishing. With a reputation
for being “publishers for the people,” the Chambers brothers’ publishing
house created a new polity of consumers consisting of a family readership
among the middle and working classes. Robert Chambers targeted the
same audience for his Vestiges by domesticating evolutionary theory. He
also established a number of important conventions for future populariz-
ers of science, including a successful model for the evolutionary epic with
its emphasis on the wonder of the natural world; a new hybrid genre that
allowed science journalists to move between a variety of literary forms;
and guidelines for establishing a rapport with the public that gave readers
a growing sense of power as they worked together with the author to un-
derstand the sublime mysteries of nature. Moreover, Chambers challenged