Chambers, Robert
CHAMBERS, ROBERT (1802-1871), Scottish author and publisher, was born at Peebles on the 10th of July 1802. He was sent to the local schools, and gave evidence of unusual literary taste and ability. A small circulating library in the town, and a copy of the Encyclopaedia Britannica which his father had purchased, furnished him with stores of reading of which he eagerly availed himself. Long afterwards he wrote of his early years - "Books, not playthings, filled my hands in childhood. At twelve I was deep, not only in poetry and fiction, but in encyclopaedias." Robert had been destined for the church, but this design had to be abandoned for lack of means. The family removed to Edinburgh in 1813, and in 1818 Robert began business as a bookstall-keeper in Leith Walk. He was then only sixteen, and his whole stock consisted of a few old books belonging to his father. In 1819 his elder brother William had begun a similar business, and the two eventually united as partners in the publishing firm of W. & R. Chambers. Robert Chambers showed an enthusiastic interest in the history and antiquities of Edinburgh, and found a most congenial task in his Traditions of Edinburgh (2 vols., 1824), which secured for him the approval and the personal friendship of Sir Walter Scott. A History of the Rebellions in Scotland from 1638 to 1745 (5 vols., 1828) and numerous other works followed.
In the beginning of 1832 William Chambers started a weekly publication under the title of Chambers's Edinburgh Journal (known since 1854 as Chambers's Journal of Literature, Science and Arts), which speedily attained a large circulation. Robert was at first only a contributor. After fourteen numbers had appeared, however, he was associated with his brother as joint-editor, and his collaboration contributed more perhaps than anything else to the success of the Journal.
Among the other numerous works of which Robert was in whole or in part the author, the Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen (4 vols., Glasgow, 1832-1835), the Cyclopaedia of English Literature (1844), the Life and Works of Robert Burns (4 vols., 1851), Ancient Sea Margins (1848), the Domestic Annals of Scotland (3 vols., 1859-1861) and the Book of Days (2 vols., 1862-1864) were the most important. Chambers's Encyclopaedia (1859-1868), with Dr Andrew Findlater as editor, was carried out under the superintendence of the brothers (see Encyclopaedia). The Cyclopaedia of English Literature [1] contains a series of admirably selected extracts from the best authors of every period, "set in a biographical and critical history of the literature itself." For the Life of Burns he made diligent and laborious original investigations, gathering many hitherto unrecorded facts from the poet's sister, Mrs Begg, to whose benefit the whole profits of the work were generously devoted. Robert Chambers was a scientific geologist, and availed himself of tours in Scandinavia and Canada for the purpose of geological exploration. The results of his travels were embodied in Tracings of the North of Europe (1851) and Tracings in Iceland and the Faroe Islands (1856). His knowledge of geology was one of the principal grounds on which the authorship of the Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (2 vols., 1843-1846) was eventually assigned to him. The book was published anonymously. Robert Chambers was aware of the storm that would probably be raised at the time by a rational treatment of the subject, and did not wish to involve his firm in the discredit that a charge of heterodoxy would bring with it. The arrangements for publication were made through Alexander Ireland of Manchester, and the secret was so well kept that such different names as those of Prince Albert and Sir Charles Lyell were coupled with the book. Ireland in 1884 issued a 12th edition, with a preface giving an account of its authorship, which there was no longer any reason for concealing. The Book of Days was Chambers's last publication, and perhaps his most elaborate. It was a miscellany of popular antiquities in connexion with the calendar, and it is supposed that his excessive labour in connexion with this book hastened his death, which took place at St Andrews on the 17th of March 1871. Two years before, the university of St Andrews had conferred upon him the degree of doctor of laws, and he was elected a member of the Athenaeum club in London. It is his highest claim to distinction that he did so much to give a healthy tone to the cheap popular literature which has become so important a factor in modern civilization.
His brother, William Chambers (1800-1883) was born at Peebles, on the 16th of April 1800. He was the financial genius of the publishing firm. He laid the city of Edinburgh under the greatest obligations by his public spirit and munificence. As lord provost he procured the passing in 1867 of the Improvement Act, which led to the reconstruction of a great part of the Old Town, and at a later date he proposed and carried out, largely at his own expense, the restoration of the noble and then neglected church of St Giles, making it in a sense "the Westminster Abbey of Scotland." This service was fitly acknowledged by the offer of a baronetcy, which he did not live to receive, dying on the 20th of May 1883, three days before the reopening of the church. He was the author of a history of St Giles's, of a memoir of himself and his brother (1872), and of many other useful publications. On his death in 1883 Robert Chambers (1832-1888), son of Robert Chambers, succeeded as head of the firm, and edited the Journal until his death. His eldest son, Charles Edward Stuart Chambers (b. 1859), became editor of the Journal and chairman of W. & R. Chambers, Limited.
See also Memoir of Robert Chambers, with Autobiographic Reminiscences of William Chambers (1872), the 13th ed. of which (1884) has a supplementary chapter; Alexander Ireland's preface to the 12th ed. (1884) of the Vestiges of Creation; the Story of a Long and Busy Life (1884), by William Chambers; and some discriminating appreciation in James Payn's Some Literary Recollections (1884), chapter v. The Select Writings of Robert Chambers were published in 7 vols. in 1847, and a complete list of the works of the brothers is added to A Catalogue of Some of the Rarer Books ... in the Collection of C.E.S. Chambers (Edinburgh, 1891).
[1] A new and enlarged edition of this work, edited by David Patrick, LL. D., appeared in 1903.
Note - this article incorporates content from Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, (1910-1911)
