A Nation of Readers: The Lending Library in Georgian England

• Published in: Libraries & the Cultural Record Vol. 44; no. 3; pp. 380 - 382
• Main Author: Morrison, Ian
• Format: Book Review Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Austin University of Texas Press 01.01.2009; University of Texas at Austin (University of Texas Press)
• Subjects: Academic libraries; Allan, David; Clubs; Colleges & universities; England; Inns of Court; Juncture; Lending libraries; Libraries; Library history; Literacy; Museums; Politics; England; United Kingdom > UK; Australia; North America; Ireland; Tasmania Australia
• ISSN: 1932-4855; 1932-9555; 2164-8034; 1932-9555; 2166-3033
• DOI: 10.1353/lac.0.0079

Allan rules out of scope the university libraries, the Inns of Court, and the British Museum Library: the universities and the Inns of Court were highly exclusive ("in Georgian Oxford and Cambridge the libraries were principally for the use of teaching staff, and were not at this juncture even freely available to the student body" [212]) , and their collections were not "replicated to any extent across the rest of the country" (212), including at the British Museum, so Allan argues that they are irrelevant to his core interest, the availability of books to the populace at large. The very existence of these exclusive collections, though, illustrates the relationship between power and print and contextualizes the social and political ambitions - "personal liberation and political awakening" (224), alongside simple clubbishness - that underpinned so many of the book clubs and subscription libraries.