Robert Chambers (publisher Born 1802) - W. & R. Chambers

W. & R. Chambers

At the beginning of 1832 Robert's brother William Chambers started a weekly publication entitled Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, which speedily gained a large circulation. Robert was at first only a contributor, but after 14 volumes had appeared, he became joint editor with his brother, and his collaboration contributed more perhaps than anything else to the success of the Journal. The two brothers eventually united as partners in the book publishing firm of W. & R. Chambers Publishers.

Among the other numerous works of which Robert was in whole or in part the author, the Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen (4 vols., Glasgow, 1832–1835), the Cyclopædia of English Literature (1844), the Life and Works of Robert Burns (4 vols., 1851), Ancient Sea Margins (1848), the Domestic Annals of Scotland (1859–1861) and the Book of Days (2 vols., 1862–1864) were the most important.

Chambers's Encyclopaedia (1859–1868), with Dr Andrew Findlater as editor, was carried out under the superintendence of the brothers. The Cyclopædia of English Literature contains a series of admirably selected extracts from the best authors of every period, "set in a biographical and critical history of the literature itself." For the Life of Burns he made diligent and laborious original investigations, gathering many hitherto unrecorded facts from the poet's sister, Mrs. Begg, to whose benefit the whole profits of the work were generously devoted.