1. Banks G. LinnaeusMrs, The Manchester man (3 vols, London, 1876), ii, 147–8.
2. For the recommendation in the 1830s of "biographies of famous men, 'especially such as have risen by their own efforts from obscurity'", as reading matter for the working class, see David Vincent, "Reading in the working-class home", in Walton John K. and Walvin James (eds), Leisure in Britain 1780-1939 (Manchester, 1983), 208-26, p. 213. The SDUK published Craik's George The pursuit of knowledge under difficulties (2 vols, London, 1830-31), a series of biographies which commended knowledge as "one of the supports of morality" (i, 418). For later works stressing the moral benefits of natural history in particular, see Smiles Samuel, Life of a Scotch naturalist: Thomas Edward (London, 1876) and Robert Dick, baker of Thurso, geologist and botanist (London, 1878)
3. Jolly William, The life of John Duncan, Scotch weaver and botanist (London, 1883). Henry Brougham's model of the diffusion of knowledge is clearly articulated in his "Address to … the Manchester Mechanics' Institution … 1835", quoted in Vincent David, "The decline of the oral tradition in popular culture", in Storch Robert D. (ed.), Popular culture and custom in nineteenth-century England (London, 1982), 20-47, p. 28.
4. Merrill Lynn L., The romance of natural history (Oxford, 1989), 43-47