As is widely known, the Bridgewater Treatises on the Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God as Manifested in the Creation (1833–36) were commissioned in accordance with a munificent bequest of the eighth Earl of Bridgewater, the Rev. Francis Henry Egerton (1756–1829), and written by seven leading men of science, together with one prominent theological commentator. Less widely appreciated is the extent to which the Bridgewater Treatises rank among the scientific best-sellers of the early nineteenth century. Their varied blend of natural theology and popular science attracted extraordinary contemporary interest and ‘celebrity’, resulting in unprecedented sales and widespread reviewing. Much read by the landed, mercantile and professional classes, the success of the series ‘encouraged other competitors into the field’, most notably Charles Babbage's unsolicited Ninth Bridgewater Treatise (1837). As late as 1882 the political economist William Stanley Jevons was intending to write an unofficial Bridgewater Treatise, and even an author of the prominence of Lord Brougham could not escape having his Discourse of Natural Theology (1835) described by Edward Lytton Bulwer as ‘the tenth Bridgewater Treatise’.
