Page:The Story of the House of Cassell (book).djvu/55

 of general knowledge immediately suggested to people interested in religious studies a work on similar lines. The proposal was made to Cassell, who, in October, 1852, announced his intention to adopt it, and in May following a fortnightly serial, the "Popular Biblical Educator," was begun. Crown quarto in form, it was published at twopence a number. The editor, the Rev. E. H. Plumptre, combined in it a Biblical encyclopædia of chronology, geography, and natural history, of literature and prophecy, with a course of theological studies. He secured as contributors Dr. Ginsburg, Canon Rawlinson, F. W. Farrar, Stanley Leathes, C. J. Vaughan, S. G. Green, and others who became famous in their day. With a more limited appeal this work was naturally less widely circulated than the "Popular Educator." It reached a second edition, but then the demand fell off, and it was not re-issued. Twenty years later the scheme was revived in the "Bible Educator."

The year 1853 was one of enormously fertile activity for Cassell. Having dealt with popular needs in secular and religious instruction and introduced solid books at a cheap price into homes where books were formerly unknown, he now turned to the question of literary recreation. He was, perhaps, the first entrepreneur of literature and journalism to regard the family as a unit for this purpose. Once more his intimate knowledge of the conditions of life among the proletariat came into play. There was a plenitude of papers. But they were either mainly political, mainly religious, or mainly instructive. Cassell conceived a family circle in need of a paper which might or might not be all these, but should certainly be something more. From that point it was but a step to the Illustrated Family Paper, which came out in 1853. It offered for popular consumption biography, history, art, science, and poetry, but assisted their deglutition with topical pictures (the Crimean War was very fully illustrated), and above all, with fiction.

It is not easy now to get the angle of the