Chambers, William (1800-1883), was a Scottish publisher and architectural preservationist. In 1832, he and his younger brother Robert cofounded the publishing company W. & R. Chambers Ltd., a firm long known for its encyclopedias, dictionaries, and other reference books. He also devoted himself to urban renewal projects in Edinburgh.
Chambers was the son of a textile manufacturer. He became an apprentice to a bookseller at the age of 14 and began his own business with his brother five years later. Chambers soon expanded into printing. Between 1825 and 1830, he wrote a Book of Scotland and also completed, with his brother’s help, a Gazetteer of Scotland, a description of Scottish place names. In 1832, William Chambers launched Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal, to which both he and his brother contributed articles. Later that year, the two brothers set up the publishing company W & R Chambers. The first edition of its most famous product, the 10-volume Chambers’s Encyclopaedia, was prepared between 1859 and 1868.
Chambers served as lord provost of Edinburgh from 1865 to 1869. He successfully put through a plan to improve the older part of the city and used his own money to fund restoration work on St. Giles’s Cathedral. In 1879, he wrote a historical sketch of the cathedral.
William Chambers was born on April 16, 1800, in the Scottish town of Peebles. In 1859, after he had become a prosperous publisher, he founded a museum, library, and art gallery in his native town. In 1864, he completed a history of Peeblesshire. He died on May 23, 1883.
See also Chambers, Robert .
