In 1827, the year of his death, Scottish publisher Archibald Constable launched Constable's Miscellany of Original or Selected Publications, in the Various Departments of Literature, Science, and the Arts. This series of inexpensive contemporary non-fiction works for a popular audience, selling for 1 shilling per volume paralleled, but in a more upscale way, the "useful knowledge" publications of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, which launched its Library of Useful Knowledge in inexpensive printed wrappers the same year. Constable's series, which was offered in early publisher's cloth bindings, with engraved frontispieces, eventually extended to its 80th volume in 1834, continuing after Constable's company went bankrupt in 1831.
