Genre:

Editorial

Subjects:

Periodicals, Reading, Science Communication, Specialization, Internationalism, Religion, Publishing

    Reports that the 'academy was set on foot in answer to a widely felt and constantly expressed dissatisfaction with the existing organs of literary and scientific criticism', and that it has largely succeeded in its role as 'a journal which should systematically survey the European literary and scientific movement as a whole, and pass judgement upon books not from an insular, still less from a partisan, but from a cosmopolitan point of view'. It has also succeeded as a 'critical journal [...] on which the general reader might rely for guidance through the waste of superficial and ephemeral literature by which he is surrounded and through which he has neither the time nor perhaps the ability to guide himself'. While the circulation figures have 'exceeded our most sanguine expectations', the necessity of 'transfer[ring] the publication of the academy to a new firm' has 'grown out of our theological position'. Explains that 'Mr. Murray [...] did not call in question the fact of our theological impartiality, but disapproved of it', and that he has thus 'offered to resign all his interest in the copyright of the Journal'. Notes that while certain sections will be increased in size, 'the purely scientific portion of the academy [is] now completely organized' and will remain the same as before, although with the addition of 'some branches of Natural Science which from want of space have been hitherto neglected'. (1)