The Athenian Society was an organization founded by John Dunton in 1691 to facilitate the writing and publication of his weekly periodical The Athenian Mercury . Though represented as a large panel of experts, the society reached its peak at four members: Dunton, Dr. John Norris , Richard Sault and Dunton's brother-in-law, Rev. Samuel Wesley . The group would answer the questions of readers about any topic, creating the first advice column . In 1693, for four weeks, The Athenian Society published also The Ladies' Mercury , the first periodical published that was specifically designed just for women .
15-541: In 1691, John Dunton founded the Athenian Society (not to be confused with several other Athenian societies) in order to publish a journal. This group was originally composed of a small number of friends: John Dunton and mathematics teacher Richard Sault , then philosopher Dr. John Norris (though he declined to be part of the Society in writing and associated to profits), quickly joined by Dunton's brother-in-law
30-476: A whole volume for 2.5 shilling (about one month after the last issue collected was released), a more permanent form with indexes preferred by learned customers and distinguished women; this is why the journal is often referenced to by its original Athenian Gazette name rather than the Athenian Mercury issues. In 1695, a glut of new titles led to the journal temporarily pausing in early 1696; in 1697,
45-610: Is no explicit contribution from Raphson) . It is unclear what relationship there might have been between Sault and Raphson, but the issue of Memoirs for the Ingenious for July, 1693 contains an exchange of letters on geometrically-inspired speculation of the sort Raphson treated in De Spatio Reali (1697) and Demonstratio de Deo (1710), followed by a letter dedicated to the Honoured Joseph Raphson, FRS ;
60-547: The Marquess of Normanby ; the second volume includes Sault's translation of a recent biography of Malebranche. In the Philosophical Transactions for 1698 is a short two-page note by Sault on Curvæ Celerrimi Descensus investigatio analytica, which shows that Sault was acquainted with Isaac Newton 's geometrical theory of vanishing quantities, and with the notation of fluxions . In 1699, Sault published
75-610: The Royal Exchange , London. John Dunton the publisher, learning of him and his skill in mathematics, supplied him with literary work. When the notion of establishing The Athenian Mercury occurred to Dunton, he sought Sault's aid as joint editor and contributor. The first number came out on 17 March 1691, and the second on 24 March. Before the third number Dunton and Sault had joined to them Dunton's brother-in-law, Samuel Wesley . There are Articles of agreement between Sam. Wesley, clerk, Richard Sault, gent., and John Dunton, for
90-454: The 4th in 1710. All four volumes were reprinted in 1728. Richard Sault Richard Sault (born around 1630s; died 1702) was an English mathematician , editor and translator , one of The Athenian Society . On the strength of his Second Spira he is also now credited as a Christian Cartesian philosopher. He kept in 1694 a mathematical school in Adam's Court, Broad Street, near
105-700: The case of worms on the tongue mentioned in this latter letter was then taken up in correspondence in Philosophical Transactions in 1694 (where, however, Raphson is given as Ralphson , as also in Edmund Halley 's paper in the same volume). Sault, like Raphson, also worked on translations from the French. His translation of Nicolas Malebranche 's Concerning the Search after Truth (London, 1694, 1695) appeared in two volumes, both dedicated to
120-682: The death of Dunton's wife and the departure of Wesley after he received a promotion, led to a brief and aborted revival of the journal. It had run for 580 issues across nineteen volumes and a third: from 17 March 1691 to 8 February 1696 (19 full volumes of thirty issues, with a temporary closure between July and September 1692), then from May to 14 June 1697 (ten issues). In 1703, Dunton sold the Athenian Mercury to publisher Andrew Bell, who collected selected and abridged parts in larger volumes called The Athenian Oracle , 3 volumes in 1703–04, with multiple reprints. Dunton would go on to project compiling three more volumes (without serialization), releasing only
135-546: The poet Rev. Samuel Wesley (according to Dunton, it would eventually grow to 12 members; there is no evidence of such additional members, though). Its name, and all its subsequent related "Athenian" names, derived from a biblical reference to St. Paul in Athens: "For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing." ( Acts 17:21 KJV ) The society
150-466: The questions) were written anonymously by "a Member of the Athenian Society" (one of the four friends). The new journal received a tremendous response and generated several imitations. On 14 February 1692 a young Jonathan Swift sent them a letter of appreciation along with an "Ode to the Athenian Society", his first published work. Concurrently to the periodical, issues of the journal were bound in calf leather and sold as The Athenian Gazette , collecting
165-835: The writing the Athenian Gazette, or Mercury, dated April 10, 1691. Originally executed by the three persons. Sault was reputed to be a gentleman of courage and passion, and on one occasion about to draw his sword on Tom Brown, one of the editors of a rival publication, the Lacedemonian Mercury . In February 1695 the programme of a projected scheme of a new royal academy stated that the mathematics would be taught in Latin, French, or English by Sault and Abraham De Moivre . About 1700 Sault moved to Cambridge, where he died in May 1702 in poverty, supported by charitable scholars. He
SECTION 10
#1732780991053180-518: Was buried in the church of St Andrew the Great on 17 May 1702. Dunton published in 1693 The Second Spira, being a fearful example of an Atheist who had apostatized from the Christian religion, and died in despair at Westminster, Dec. 8, 1692. By J. S. Dunton obtained the manuscript from Sault, who professed to know the author. The original Spira was Francesco Spiera . The preface to Dunton's volume
195-466: Was established in order to write and publish the Athenian Gazette , become The Athenian Mercury with its second issue due to a legal threat, a journal sold one penny twice weekly, then four times a week. It professed to answer in print all questions received from anonymous readers on "divinity, history, philosophy, mathematics, love, poetry", and things in general; the answers (and sometimes
210-599: Was only depicting his own mental and moral experiences. He printed in his memoirs a letter from Sault's wife, in which she accused her husband of loose living, as some proof of Sault's extramarital sex life, arguing this as a cause of his mental troubles. William Leybourne 's Pleasure with Profit (London, 1694) contains, as an appendix, Sault's A Treatise of Algebra (52pp), in which Sault's pays special attention to Joseph Raphson 's recent (1690) treatment of Converging Series for all manner of adfected equations , but prefaced by Sault's own notion of punctation of series (there
225-544: Was signed by Sault's initials, and the genuineness of the information supplied was attested by many witnesses. With it is bound up A Conference betwixt a modern Atheist and his friend. By the methodizer of the Second Spira, London, John Dunton, 1693. Thirty thousand copies of the Second Spira sold in six weeks. It is one of the seven books which Dunton repented printing, because he came to the conclusion that Sault
#52947