Robert Chambers

Robert Chambers (1802–1871) was a Scottish publisher, author and naturalist. With his brother William he founded the Edinburgh firm of W. and R. Chambers, which published Chambers's Edinburgh Journal and Chambers's Encyclopaedia and did much to spread cheap, useful reading. His early Traditions of Edinburgh (1824) collected the lore of the Old Town, and he later compiled Domestic Annals of Scotland and The Book of Days. In 1844 he anonymously published Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, an evolutionary account of the universe that caused a sensation; his authorship was officially revealed only after his death.