Science Saturday
Published by Boston firm James R. Osgood and Company in 1977, Biology, with Preludes on Current Events captures a series of lectures on the theme of biology by Rev. Joseph Cook. The plates, printed by the Heliotype Printing Co., originate from the work of microscopists Beale and Frey. The lectures were part of a series that grew out of Cook’s leadership of the Monday afternoon prayer meetings at Boston’s Tremont Temple. Starting in 1874, Cook’s presiding over the prayer meeting grew into a hugely popular local event, with many Bostonians using their lunch breaks to attend the weekly lectures. Many of the lectures focused on scientific breakthroughs and attempted to create common ground between modern science and Christian Orthodoxy.
As indicated on the title page, publisher James R. Osgood and Company was an iteration of what was originally Ticknor and Fields (founded 1832), where Osgood started as a clerk and was eventually made partner. Ticknor and Fields was a Boston powerhouse, their stable of writers including Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Twain, and Beecher Stowe. After the death of the William Ticknor, coincidentally from pneumonia while accompanying Nathaniel Hawthorne on a trip to restore Hawthorne’s own failing health, Osgood’s name was added to the masthead. Fields retired at the end of 1871 and James R. Osgood and Company was born. The firm produced several volumes from the Boston Monday Lectures series, including our 1877 volume on Biology.
James R. Osgood and Company dissolved the following year, and Osgood partnered with Henry Oscar Houghton, whose Riverside Press had had a long business relationship printing for Ticknor and Fields. Houghton, Osgood, and Company would prove to be short-lived, however, and Osgood left the firm after two years. The newly emerged Houghton Mifflin Company inherited the publishing catalog of Ticknor and Fields (along with substantial debts); the Boston Monday Lecture series was published by Houghton, Mifflin and Company from 1879 onward.
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-Olivia, Special Collections Graduate Intern