THE EIGHTEENTH‐CENTURY PROPRIETARY LIBRARY IN ENGLAND
| Pages | 81-98 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb026111 |
| Published date | 01 March 1947 |
| Date | 01 March 1947 |
| Author | FRANK BECKWITH |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY PROPRIETARY
LIBRARY IN ENGLAND
by FRANK BECKWITH
Librarian,
Leeds Library
I
THAT
phenomenon so familiar to students of eighteenth-century literature,
the 'circulating library', has endured much comment, a little of it accurate,
some of it ambiguous, a great deal of it uninformed.1 The chief obstacle to
a proper appreciation of its influence is the absence of a proper definition
of it; that given in the Oxford English Dictionary speaks the truth indeed, but
not the whole truth, for within the category are to be included at least two
major species which differ in
toto.
The first, the object of Sheridan's familiar
but shallow witticism, will not be dealt with here in any detail: it was not
unlike the modern 'twopenny' library, being a commercial venture depen-
dent on individual management and catering for the immediate wants of a
public largely uncritical and in search of passing entertainment. It is rather
with the second type, the 'proprietary' library, that this paper is concerned,
for although its aims, status, and administration were totally different from
those of its humbler if more popular contemporary, this type was, and still
is,
designated 'circulating', if the Leeds Library be taken to represent it, as
it assuredly does in every way. The relevant nomenclature for eighteenth-
century libraries is, in fact, not a little bewildering to the uninitiated: the
Leeds Library has been known as 'circulating', 'subscription', and even
'public',
while the Birmingham Library indenture of 1799 expressly names
'the Public
Library';
but the Cambridge University
library,
for
example,
was
also known as 'public', like many other essentially 'private' collections, such
as those parochial libraries which restricted the use of their treasures to the
faithful and gave the parson the key. The distinction insisted on above will
be found roughly to correspond with that made by the older local historians,
who generally deign to notice, however meagrely, the local 'proprietary'
institution, but do not, as a rule, condescend to mention the mere commercial
venture,
a distinction made so pointed in a judgement of exquisite gentility
by the excellent Mr. Horsfield of
Lewes,
to be quoted hereafter, that it is
worthy to become classic. Most of them are mentioned by S. Lewis in his
great Topographical
dictionary,
and they are generally styled 'subscription'
libraries.
1The section devoted to it in the
Cambridge
bibliography
of
English
literature,
ii. 99, is one of
the minor blemishes in that excellent work, and the treatment of it in
Johnson's
England
is
most
unsatisfactory; indeed, the statements of Mr. G. D. H. Cole in the latter (i. 211) are incompre-
hensible. The present paper is a brief summary of extended research into the subject still being
pursued by the author, and also by Miss H. Hamlyn of Birkbeck College. Mr. A. D. McKillop
has approached the subject in an article in The
Library,
4th ser., xiv (1934), 477-85. Although
limiting its scope to England, the present paper will include occasional illustrative material from
Scotland and Ireland.
82 THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY PROPRIETARY
While the ordinary commercial circulating library cannot always be dis-
missed out of hand as a mere purveyor of tenth-rate fiction,1 as some con-
temporary (and later) critics were found to do, it was almost inevitably an
impermanent agglomeration, not under control by those who used it, and
lacking obvious advantages to serious readers. The need for good, permanent
lending libraries, especially in the provinces, although London itself was
scandalously ill provided with them,2 was expressed by many eminent
scholars during the century. The value of the university and the great private
libraries, sound as their stocks might be, was severely diminished by reason
of remoteness and restricted right of
use,
and that of the parochial libraries
by virtue of narrow range and limited access. The fact that books began to
circulate at all was clear gain to culture, particularly if they were books that
men and women really wished to read. To trace this growth in demand for
books and libraries is far beyond the scope of this paper; a vast area would
need to be traversed, embracing the varied fields of education, professional
authorship, the rise of a new school of fiction, provincial
letters,
even perhaps
the new zeal for scientific investigation, the whole cultural basis of the
Aujklärung,
and not least a series of new problems evoked by the Industrial
Revolution. The problem of supplying this demand is more to our purpose,
but still too large a question to be dealt with at all adequately.3 Nor can the
fascinating problem of how demand and supply interact be considered.
Early in the field to satisfy the new and increasing curiosity of the Age of
Enlightenment were the magazines; that the
Gentleman's magazine
enjoyed
great popularity was due to its deliberate policy of providing information
with entertainment but without frivolity. Here was a library in miniature
whose very success proved a want, and in the days when reviewing was a
serious occupation the lengthy notices provided in the magazines were almost
a substitute for the books themselves. The bookshops, too, of the period
were often much more than mere purveyors of printed matter; they
were,
in
fact, real centres of culture, where groups of scholars not only met for discussion
but were welcomed and provided for, as they were also in the coffee-houses.4
Auctions of books had become more frequent; provincial printing increased;
country newspapers multiplied.
Yet this very growth meant that it was rapidly becoming impossible for
all except a very few scholars to collect out of their own resources all the
books they might need; books were neither cheap nor readily accessible to
the student engaged on serious investigation. Priestley, for example, found
great difficulty in assembling material for his early 'Histories' of electricity
1Ricardo, for example, received his stimulus to the study of economics by picking up Adam
Smith's work in such a library at Bath (Lord Broughton,
Recollections,
ii. 179); Bull's at Bath
'became Southey's Bodleian' (W. Haller, The
early
life of
R.
Southey (1917), 25), and at the
same place Windham read for two days Priestley's
Letters on
Mind
(Diary,
ed. Mrs. H. Baring
(1866),
101). For some adverse comments, however, see later in this paper.
2 A. Esdaile, The
British Museum Library
(1946), 31-2, and the references there provided.
Nichols,
Literary
anecdotes,
ii. 509-12; v. 551, 576 and elsewhere.
3 On this aspect of the eighteenth-century book world Mr. A. S. Collins and others have
furnished much information in various books and articles.
4 Cf.
Monthly
magazine,
liii (1822), 138 ('Stephensiana', on Ridgway's, Piccadilly).
To continue reading
Request your trial