Before the public library : reading, community, and identity in the Atlantic world, 1650-1850
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Before the public library : reading, community, and identity in the Atlantic world, 1650-1850
(Library of the written word, v. 61. The handpress world ; v. 46)
Brill, c2018
- : hardback
Available at 3 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [371]-397) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Before the Public Library explores the emergence of community-based lending libraries in the Atlantic World before the advent of the Public Library movement in the mid-nineteenth century. Essays by eighteen scholars from a range of disciplines seek to place, for the first time, community libraries within an Atlantic context over a two-century period. Taking a comparative approach, this volume shows that community libraries played an important - and largely unrecognized - role in shaping Atlantic social networks, political and religious movements, scientific and geographic knowledge, and economic enterprise. Libraries had a distinct role to play in shaping modern identities through the acquisition and circulation of specific kinds of texts, the fostering of sociability, and the building of community-based institutions.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
Notes on Contributors
Introduction
Mark Towsey and Kyle B. Roberts
Part 1: Empire and Enlightenment
1 Building Religious Communities with Books: The Quaker and Anglican Transatlantic Libraries, 1650-1710
Louisiane Ferlier
2 Poetry and Civic Urbanism in the Coffee-House Library in the Mid-eighteenth Century
Markman Ellis
3 Of Mudfish, Harpsichords and Books: Libraries and Community in Eighteenth-Century Jamaica
April G. Shelford
4 Affleck Generations: The Libraries of the Boswells of Auchinleck, 1695-1825
James J. Caudle
5 Sedition, Revolution and Libertinism in Eighteenth-Century Brazil: The Library of Naturalist Jose Vieira Couto
Junia Ferreira Furtado
Part 2: Revolution and Nation Building
6 Uncommon Knowledge: Late Eighteenth-Century American Subscription Library Collections
Cheryl Knott
7 Reading Sheffield: Sheffield Libraries and Book Clubs, 1771-1850
Sue Roe and Loveday Herridge
8 Challenging Institutional Ambitions: The Practice of Book Exchanges at the New York Society Library, 1789-1795
Rob Koehler
9 A "Quaint Corner" of the Reading Nation: Romantic Readerships in Rural Perthshire, 1780-1830
Katie Halsey
Part 3: Institutionalisation and Expansion
10 From Private Devotion to "Public" Education: Northern Dissenting Academy Libraries and Their Benefactors
Rachel Eckersley
11 The Foundation of Plymouth Public Library: Cultural Status, Philanthropy and Expanding Readerships, 1810-1825
Annika Bautz
12 Reading on the Edge of the Atlantic: The Easton Library Company
Christopher Phillips
13 Crafting Respectability: The Politics of Class at the Mechanic Apprentices' Library of Boston
Lynda K. Yankaskas
Part 4: Public Libraries
14 Reading Publics: Books, Communities and Readers in the Early History of American Public Libraries
Tom Glynn
15 From Voluntary to State Action: Samuel Smiles, James Silk Buckingham and the Rise of the Public Library Movement in Britain
Alistair Black
Bibliography of Secondary Works
Index
by "Nielsen BookData"