Advertising, along with many types of ephemeral literature, was once thought unworthy of serious academic attention. Over the past few decades, however, it has become increasingly popular for the insights its content can bring into early modern society and culture. As a result, there have been a growing number of studies on advertisements in many different forms of contemporary mass media. These have included projects on advertising in almanacs, on handbills or broadsheets, in various types of periodicals, and on trade cards. The majority, however, have focused on early eighteenth-century newspapers. There are many reasons for this, including the increasing frequency and sophistication of London newspapers and the growth of provincial versions. As with modern newspapers, each had specific target audiences who helped to determine the nature of the advertising they would carry. Some, such as the mid-eighteenth century Publick Adviser, were even specifically designed to carry advertising. Fortunately, a great many early modern newspapers have survived the centuries. Thanks to digitalization projects carried out by the British Library and other archives, many are now easily accessible on the Internet. As Jeffrey Wigelsworth has rightly noted, the advertisements in such publications are useful for studying the “marketing of science” in this period (2). He is not correct, however, in suggesting that this was a new phenomenon linked to newspapers. In fact, such “scientific” promotional pieces had been appearing in almanacs for almost a century by this point. These small, cheap publications were printed annually and used throughout the following year. Generally written by some type of astrological practitioner, almanacs contained both textual and promotional references to scientific products and services. Books, which made up a large proportion of the advertisements in almanacs, included many scientific titles such as medicine, mathematics, astrology/astronomy, and navigation (Louise Hill Curth, English Almanacs, Astrology and Popular Medicine, 1550–1700 [Manchester, 2007]). Bretnor’s almanac of 1615 carried an advertisement for lessons in “arithmeticke, geometry, navigation, astronomy and astrology.” In 1622, Gilden’s readers were told that they could buy various “Instruments,” including globes, spheres, and rulers in either wood or copper (T. Bretnor, A New Almanac and Prognostication [London, 1615], sig. A2r, and G. Gilden, A New Almanacke and Prognostication [London, 1622], sig. A2r). Unlike newspapers that were often discarded or passed on after one reading, the advertisements in almanacs would be seen again and again. Advertising also appeared in other forms of seventeenth-century “mass media,” such as the handbills and newspapers discussed by historians Michael Harris and Roy Porter.

Despite this fallacious premise, Wigelsworth’s seven chapters do contain a great deal of interesting material. Although his rather broad stated remit is to look at advertisements for “science and its related products,” the majority prove to be on “books, lectures and instruments” (176). The advertisements in chapter 2, for example, come from the Royal Society’s journal Philosophical Transactions. This is followed by several chapters on newspaper advertisements. Chapter 3 looks at “Newspapers and Bipartisan Advertisement,” although it is not clear why this is based on “two of London’s most read political newspapers” (41). Chapter 4 moves from political to several daily newspapers. The underlying premise behind this investigation is that they illustrate a “standardization” in “the terms and language used” (117). In order to defend this claim, Wigelsworth follows this discussion with two main case studies. The first (chap. 5) discusses the “longitude advertisements” that proliferated in London newspapers printed in 1714–15. Wigelsworth suggests that these advertisements to “solve the navigational problem of longitude” “reflect larger phenomena” such as “the nexus of commercialization, natural philosophy and advertising” (119). Chapter 6 moves on to advertisements for public lecturers on Isaac Newton’s “natural philosophy” (147). Selling Science in the Age of Newton ends with a conclusion that attempts to pull these somewhat disparate themes together in only eight pages.

Sadly, this book has not managed to fulfill the tantalizing promise to show how “when science became advertised, it became a commodity marketed on the back pages of newspapers” (14). There are a number of reasons for this, beginning with the premise that the relationship between “science and commercial” was an eighteenth-century phenomena. This is contradicted not only by previous studies on various types of ephemeral literature but within Wigelsworth’s second chapter on the Philosophical Transactions, which was first published in 1665 (19). Readers will also find further discrepancies between what the introduction states and the subsequent chapters. These include statements such as “I have … ignored medical advertisements” (10) followed by a discussion of “Dr Newman’s famous Anti-Venereal Pill” or “The Case of Inoculating the Small-Pox” (86–87). It may well be that such errors are at least partly related to what Wigelsworth calls “the fluid definition of popular science” (8). However, there have been and probably always will be debates among academics about terms such as “popular” or “science.” That said, it is ultimately the responsibility of the author to decide how best to define them within the context of his or her own research.