Library of Useful Knowledge
One significant set of publications by the SDUK was the Library of Useful Knowledge; sold for a sixpence and published biweekly, its books focused on scientific topics. The first volume, an introduction to the series by Brougham, sold over 33,000 copies. However, attempts to reach the working class market were largely unsuccessful; only among the middle class was there sustained interest in popular science texts.
Like many other works in the new genre of popular scientific narratives—such as the Bridgewater Treatises and Humphry Davy's Consolations in Travel—the books of the Library of Useful Knowledge focused on natural theology and imbued scientific fields with concepts of progress: uniformitarianism in geology, the nebular hypothesis in astronomy, and the scala naturae in the life sciences. According to historian James Secord, such works met a demand for "general concepts and simple laws", and in the process helped establish the authority of professional science and specialised scientific disciplines.
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