The British Almanac of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge: For the Year 1829 (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

Excerpt from The British Almanac of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge: For the Year 1829

Explanation of the columns headed Length of day, Day's increase' or decrease, Day breaks, and Twilight ends.

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This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from The British Almanac of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge: For the Year 1829

The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, on the 1st of January last, submitted to the public the British Almanac for 1828. This was almost the first attempt in this country to produce an Almanac that should not only be useful to all classes, and of which the information should be wholly of a popular character, but which should be purified from the superstitions, prejudices, and indecencies which have characterized some of the Almanacs of which the circulation has been the most extensive. By a Parliamentary Return of the year 1828, we find that the Stamp Duty paid upon the Almanacs of England amounts to £30, 136. 3s. 9d. - which, the duty being Fifteen-Pence upon each Almanac, exhibits a circulation of 451,593 annually. It may be safely asserted that two-thirds of these publications contain some large portion of the matter just described; and they thus keep alive a spirit of ignorance, utterly opposed to the desire for sound and practical information, which distinguishes our own times.

The Society's Almanac for 1828, although published when the year had commenced, had a very large sale. The success of this attempt convinced the Committee that a large body of their countrymen have no taste for those astrological absurdities, by which their understandings had been habitually insulted. The information which their Almanac supplies is applicable to the wants of all classes of persons. Its conductors pretend not to foretell the weather, because the science of meteorology is far too imperfect to furnish the means of any calculations, beyond very general inferences, from the course of past seasons to the probable aspect of the future. They profess no knowledge of future political events, because these depend upon the thoughts and actions of men, and are utterly unconnected with the movements of the heavenly bodies, upon which the ignorance and superstition of dark ages fancied them to hinge. The place of such vain and hurtful, because misleading speculations, is supplied by pure and useful information; and the whole quantity of matter in this Almanac is increased to more than twice that of the old ones. To supply a variety of Tables which almost every man engaged in the world requires, twelve pages have been added to the Almanac of the present year; - the price has necessarily been increased to 2s. 6d.

The matters contained in this Almanac are truly useful and of indispensable necessity; and whatever is technical is explained with clearness and brevity. By an equal attention to the exclusion of everything that can be injurious, and to the introduction of whatever is important to be known for the guidance of the daily transactions of the coming year, the Society's Almanac, as ar as is possible in such a publication, will, it is trusted, promote the growth of sound knowledge.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.