Creation of Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge

It was founded in 1826 by Henry Brougham, later Baron Brougham and Vaux, with a number of fellow educational reformers, many of them Whig or radical MPs and lawyers, to bring instruction to a mass readership These reformers included James Mill, Zachary Macaulay, Lord John Russell, William Tooke, and George Birkbeck, founder in 1823, with Brougham’s support, of the first London Mechanics’ Institution (The Times, 3 December 1824, 31 January 1825, 9 July 1825) The extension of education to all classes and all ages was the larger aim of this group of reformers, some of whom (Brougham, Birkbeck, and Macaulay) had also started a society to encourage the spread of infant schools in 1824 (The Times, 7 June 1824) The SDUK was first proposed at a meeting convened by Brougham in Furnivall’s Inn in November 1826 (Quarterly Journal of Education, vol. IX, 1833) The aim was to exploit recent advances in printing and distribution by publishing cheap, informative works to “supply the appetite which had been created by elementary instruction” (through infants’ schools and mechanics’ institutes) and to “direct the ability to read to useful ends”, as the Whig MP Thomas Spring Rice declared at a meeting of the Society in 1828 (The Times, 19 May 1828) It was agreed that the Society’s publications in its Library of Useful Knowledge would avoid party politics and religion, in order to appeal to the widest audience and also to avoid controversy among its members, who represented a broad spread of religious affiliation, from non-believers to liberal Anglicans and dissenters of various kinds Despite this precaution, the Society attracted negative attention from Tories and Church of England commentators This was because its founders were well-known for other activities on behalf of political and educational reform Many were prominent members of the Council of the new University of London (later University College London), founded in 1825 and preparing to open in October 1828 to teach students of all faiths and none, who were prevented from graduating at Oxford and Cambridge because they were not confessing Anglicans