Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge

It was a pioneer of cheap educational publishing in the 1820s. Its treatises discussed new scientific and technological subjects. 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). 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