Robert Chambers of Edinburgh: Victorian Polymath and Educator by Iris Macfarlane and Alan Macfarlane

Reviewed by: Robert Chambers of Edinburgh: Victorian Polymath and Educator by Iris Macfarlane and Alan Macfarlane Rebekah Greene (bio) Iris Macfarlane with Alan Macfarlane, Robert Chambers of Edinburgh: Victorian Polymath and Educator (New York: Routledge, 2021), pp. xiv + 350, $160/£120 hardcover, $48.95/£36.99 e-book. Robert Chambers of Edinburgh is a fascinating biographical study of one of nineteenth-century Scotland’s most interesting thinkers. Today, Chambers (1802–71) is most remembered by scholars of literature as one of the founders of Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal and by science historians as an early evolutionary thinker and the author of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844). Chambers was also a prolific writer with interests in folklore, biography, geology, and social reform whose work was read with interest by many, including well-known figures such as Prince Albert, Benjamin Disraeli, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Chambers’s story is one of hard work and perseverance. After years of selling used books, he eventually leveraged his connections in the Edinburgh publishing world and began his writing career with early support from Sir Walter Scott. Chambers’s vast output throughout his career as a writer can occasionally feel overwhelming. For example, Macfarlane observes that “in three years, he contributed to the Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal the following: 117 essays, and part of 44 others; 76 articles; 15 biographies; 4 tales; 3 poems” (332). That Chambers was able to produce [End Page 509] so much—especially given the challenges of managing a business, a large family, and regular bouts of poor health—is remarkable. Tracing Chambers’s career from humble beginnings to successful businessman provides the organizing structure for this biography. Macfar-lane’s study can best be divided into four parts. The first four chapters cover Chambers’s early family life and his struggles to establish himself in Edinburgh. Chapters 5–7 afford an overview of his history and folklore work, while chapters 8–10 offer insights into Chambers and the ways his interests in social reform informed his career as a publisher. The final four chapters survey the composition of Vestiges and later works, including a well-received biography of Robert Burns. Ultimately, through her detailed exploration of the phases of Chambers’s career, Macfarlane invites a reconsideration of this oft-neglected Scottish thinker, the circles in which he traveled, and his influence. Macfarlane’s treatment of the establishment of the Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal as “a family magazine for the middle classes” is a special highlight of the book (169). In each installment, there was something to appeal to every member of the home. Much of the attraction of the journal was due to its broad range of subject matter, featuring sundry “pieces on Geology, health, slavery and emigration, Malthus, old burgh laws, Mr Babbage’s machines, schools, capital punishment, Highland chiefs, Bentham, cricket, clever women, the seashore” and “beauty tips and advice on correct speech” (169). Besides entertainment, the mission of the journal was educational. Throughout his tenure as editor, Chambers ensured his readers knew about efforts to reform “terrible housing, child mortality, illiteracy, [and] long working hours” (172). He also used the periodical to spread awareness about working men’s institutes, improved infant care, and the importance of savings banks. The biography’s exploration of Chambers’s role in the development of evolutionary theory is also compelling. With the anonymous publication of Vestiges in 1844, Chambers synthesized his wide studies in geology into what Stephen Foster has described as “the first modern vision of nature as a unified, changing, and evolving system” in a work that predates The Origin of Species by fifteen years (Foster, “The Critical Response to Vestiges,” Victorian Web). Macfarlane observes that although Vestiges shocked audiences when it was first published, bringing the idea of evolution into the mainstream consciousness, “today its seductions are less obvious, and partly for the reason that its conclusions have long ceased to surprise” (252). Although controversial, Vestiges attracted a diverse readership on both sides of the Atlantic, quickly selling multiple editions. Highlights of Macfarlane’s chapters on Vestiges include further insight into Chambers’s revision and production processes, as well as the criticism [End Page 510] levelled against...

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