CHAMBERS, ROBERT (1802-1871), Scottish author and publisher, was born at Peebles on July Io, 1802. A small circulat ing library in the town, and a copy of the Encyclopedia Britannica which his father had purchased, furnished the boy with stores of reading of which he eagerly availed himself. Long afterwards he wrote of his early years—"Books, not playthings, filled my hands in childhood. At 12 I was deep, not only in poetry and fiction, but in encyclopaedias." The family removed to Edinburgh in 1813, and in 1818 Robert began business at 16 as a bookstall keeper in Leith Walk. In 1819 his elder brother William had begun a similar business, and the two eventually united as part ners in the publishing firm of W. and R. Chambers. Robert Cham bers was an enthusiast for the history and antiquities of Edin burgh, and his Traditions of Edinburgh (1824), secured for him the personal friendship of Sir Walter Scott. A History of the Rebellions in Scotland from 1638 to 1745 (1828), and numerous other works followed.
At the beginning of 1832 William Chambers started a weekly publication under the title of Chambers's Edinburgh Journal (known since 1854 as Chambers's Journal of Literature, Science and Arts), which speedily attained a large circulation.
Among the numerous works of which Robert was in whole or in part the author, the Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen (Glasgow, 1832-35), the Cyclopaedia of English Liter ature (1844), the Life and Works of Robert Burns (1851), An cient Sea Margins (1848), the Domestic Annals of Scotland (1859-61) and the Book of Days (1862-64) were the most im portant. Chambers's Encyclopaedia (1859-68), with Dr. Andrew Findlater as editor, was carried out under the superintendence of the brothers (see ENCYCLOPAEDIA).
As a geologist, Robert Chambers published Tracings of the North of Europe (I851) and Tracings in Iceland and the Faroe Islands (1856). His knowledge of geology was one of the prin cipal grounds on which the authorship of the Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation was eventually assigned to him. The Book of Days, a miscellany of popular antiquities, was his last publication. He died at St. Andrews on March 17, 1871.
His brother, WILLIAM CHAMBERS (1800-83), the financial genius of the publishing firm, was born at Peebles, on April 16, 1800. He laid the city of Edinburgh under the greatest obligations by his public spirit and munificence. As lord provost he procured the passing in 1867 of the Improvement Act, which led to the reconstruction of a great part of the Old Town, and at a later date he proposed and carried out, largely at his own expense, the restoration of the noble and then neglected church of St. Giles, making it in a sense "the Westminster Abbey of Scotland." This service was fitly acknowledged by the offer of a baronetcy, which he did not live to receive, dying on May 20, 1883, three days before the reopening of the church. He was the author of a history of St. Giles, of a memoir of himself and his brother (1872), and of many other useful publications. On his death in 1883 Robert Chambers (1832-88), son of Robert Chambers, succeeded as head of the firm, and edited the Journal until his death. His eldest son, Charles Edward Stuart Chambers (b. 1859), became editor of the Journal and chairman of W. & R. Chambers, Ltd.
See also Memoir of Robert Chambers, with Autobiographic Rem iniscences of William Chambers (1872), the 13th ed. of which (1884) has a supplementary chapter; Alexander Ireland's preface to the 12th ed. (1884) of the Vestiges of Creation; the Story of a Long and Busy Life (1884), by William Chambers; and some discriminating apprecia tion in James Payn's Some Literary Recollections (2884), chapter v. The Select Writings of Robert Chambers were published in seven vols. in 1847, and a complete list of the works of the brothers is added to A Catalogue of Some of the Rarer Books ... in the Collection of C. E. S. Chambers (Edinburgh, 1891).