Before the public library : reading, community, and identity in the Atlantic world, 1650-1850

Author(s)

• Towsey, Mark R. M.
• Roberts, Kyle B.

Bibliographic Information

Before the public library : reading, community, and identity in the Atlantic world, 1650-1850

edited by Mark Towsey, Kyle B. Roberts

（Library of the written word, v. 61. The handpress world ; v. 46）

Brill, c2018

• : hardback

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"

Details

• NCID: BB25177179
• ISBN:
  • 9789004348660
• LCCN: 2017036234
• Country Code: ne
• Title Language Code: eng
• Text Language Code: eng
• Place of Publication: Leiden
• Pages/Volumes: xvii, 415 p.
• Size: 25 cm
• Classification:
  • LCC : Z721
  • DC23 : 027
• Subject Headings:
  • LCSH : Libraries -- Atlantic Ocean Region -- History
  • LCSH : Libraries and community -- Atlantic Ocean Region -- History
  • LCSH : Libraries and society -- Atlantic Ocean Region -- History
  • LCSH : Books and reading -- Atlantic Ocean Region -- History
• Parent Bibliography ID:
  • BA85012136