The Editors of the Metaphysical Society, or Disseminating the Ideas of the Metaphysicians

Abstract

Twelve out of sixty-two members of the Metaphysical Society were active editors of well-known periodicals or weeklies throughout the eleven years of existence of the Society. Their editorial skills and choices all reveal the complex links between the Metaphysicians, the views they defended, and the periodicals in which they expressed their opinions. These editors published forty-four out of the ninety-five papers given by the members. In so doing, they contributed to some of the changes which were taking place in journalism by finding new ways of generating creative responses to main topics, and they enriched printed controversies, thereby targeting a wider middle-class audience throughout the 1870s. This chapter argues that the Society became—for its editors and other regular contributors—another kind of hub for cooperation that intersected with their editorial interests and that, in so doing, they were the great amplifiers of the debates of the Society in the 1870s.