Addressing the lower social ranks, Chambers's Journal, the product of brothers William and Robert Chambers, publicized the press extensively. Significant in this output were a pioneer history of newspapers and an ongoing concern about country gazettes.

1. Chambers, William. “The Editor's Address to His Readers.” 1 (1832–33): 1–2.

Promised that Chambers's would provide knowledge and amusement but not news because of the stamp duty.

2. “Popular Information on Literature.” 1 (1832–33): 99–100, 122, 220.

Depicted Robert Southey as a hardworking, wide-ranging author in the Quarterly Review and William Gifford and J. G. Lockhart as its editors who ensured its quality criticism in contrast to Thomas Campbell, a less energetic editor of the New Monthly Magazine. In the eighteenth century, distinguished writers established periodicals that generated little interest; in the nineteenth, anonymity produced “literary hypocrisy” but opened doors to tyros.

3. “Printing and Stereotyping.” 1 (1832–33): 278.

Explained that Chambers's use of stereotyping kept costs down.

4. [Chambers, William]. “Chambers's Edinburgh Journal.” 2 (1833–34): 1–2.

Assessment of Chambers's first year listed introduction of stereotyping; issuance in the United States and some colonies; employment of seven writers with “practice and experience in letters” to complement borrowed material; rejection of illustrations in order to appeal to “understanding,” not the “senses,” or present the “endless, meaningless flippancy” of many periodicals. Condemned the “desperate trash” of unstamped political tribunes while Chambers's commercial success legitimated its moral goal of education.