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The Reader (weekly)

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 27, 2024
Entity authorityQ85808258 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Reader was a British weekly published from 1863 to 1867. Intended as a review journal, for both science and literature, it has been called "probably the last attempt, in Victorian England, to keep together liberal scientists, theologians, and men of letters."

History

The Reader was set up in 1862 by Thomas Hughes and Norman Lockyer, neighbours in Wimbledon, to cover art, religion and science. The first issue appeared on 3 January 1863. The original backers were Christian Socialists. Some of those were bought out, in 1864, by associates of the X Club. The alliance of the groups was uneasy. The Reader was sold in autumn 1865 to Thomas Bendyshe. There were 211 weekly numbers, and the final issue appeared on 12 January 1867.

Editorial staff

The first editor was John Malcolm Ludlow, who was succeeded by David Masson. In aiming to review books of all sorts, The Reader resembled in its approach the models Monthly Review and Critical Review of the 18th century.

Editorial summary

“The Reader (weekly)” enters the record as open-knowledge reference entry. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Reader, weekly and Open-knowledge can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1863, 1867, 1862, 1864—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Reader, weekly and Open-knowledge.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“The Reader (weekly)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Reader, weekly and Open-knowledge provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 27, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q85808258. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1863, 1867, 1862 and 1864.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “The Reader (weekly)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow The Reader (weekly) primary sources, The Reader (weekly) archive and Reader research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “The Reader (weekly)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.