The Galician supplement „For the Younger” (1898–1913) compared to Polsih popular science magazines

Abstract

The article presents the statistical supplement to the studies on Polish 19th century popular science magazines. It describes the quantitative growth, publishers, publishing centres, issuing frequency, liveliness and thematic contents and reapers’ purpose. It has been established that in the years 1800-1914 30 popular science magazines were issued, mainly in Warsaw (19), mostly by printers, librarians and publishing company owners (13). This was a background for a magazinewise description of a supplement to the „Galicia’s Animal Protection Society Monthly” entitled „For the Younger” (1898-1913). The popular science monthly, destined for the youth appeared in Lviv for fifteen years and was addressed to the young animal lovers. The editorial board of the periodical wanted to sensitize the young generation of Poles to the fate of wild and household animals, as well as develop the interest in zoology and animal protection. This programme was realized mainly by stories, tales and short information notes. Sporadically, there were popular science articles or fragments of scientific works appearing there. Nevertheless, it was a first Polish specialist periodical popularising zoology and animal protection, addressed to the young readers. The study used all available (including the newest - digital libraries, databases) documentation sources and issues of the magazine titles. The historic-descriptive method and press content analysis methods were used in order to determine the origins, style, content elements, place of publishing, popularisation forms. Also the analysis and critique of the subject literature was used, which allowed for selecting and verifying the current establishments. The study also used elements of statistic method