18th, Nov, 1864.
My dear friend
We are going to establish a sound healthy scientific organ and have purchased the Reader.1
I have taken a single hundred pound share.
There are only thirty-five such shares to be issued. The proprietary will therefore be small and we shall have the matter in our own hands—
Will you become a shareholder—say for a single share?
Yours ever | John Tyndall
RI MS JT/1/TYP/3/793
LT Typescript Only
the Reader: The Reader: A Journal of Literature, Science, and Art was a short-lived and London-based academic magazine. Tyndall, Huxley, Pollock, Lubbock, Spottiswoode, Herbert Spencer, Francis Galton, John Stuart Mill, and others purchased the paper in order to use it to advance modern science. The office for The Reader was located at 24 Tavistock St. in Westminster, London. William Frederick Pollock later recalled that Tyndall and Huxley were to be ‘scientific editors’, but that although significant work was involved from the start, he could not recall ever seeing Tyndall at the office of the paper (Remembrances, vol. 2, p. 129). The Reader would not last a year in their hands, having difficulties fincancially, with finding an audience, and the commitments of its editors. See the introductory essay to this volume for more details, and letters 2184, 2186, 2187, 2189, 2197, 2196, 2200, 2202, and 2206. See also Ascent of John Tyndall, pp. 189–90; and A. Desmond, Huxley: From Devil’s Disciple to Evolution’s High Priest (Reading, MA: Perseus Books, 1994), p. 330–1, 343.
Please cite as “Tyndall2181,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on