Before the public library : : reading, community, and identity in the Atlantic world, 1650-1850 / / edited by Mark Towsey, Kyle B. Roberts.

• Superior document: Library of the Written Word, Volume 61
• TeilnehmendeR: Towsey, Mark R. M.,; Roberts, Kyle B.,
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden, Netherlands ;, Boston, [Massachusetts] : : Brill,, 2018.; ©2018
• Year of Publication: 2018
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Series: Library of the written word ; Volume 61.; Library of the written word. Handpress world ; Volume 46.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (415 pages) :; illustrations.

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

Front Matter -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Acknowledgements -- List of Illustrations -- Notes on Contributors -- Introduction / Mark Towsey and Kyle B. Roberts -- Empire and Enlightenment -- Building Religious Communities with Books: The Quaker and Anglican Transatlantic Libraries, 1650–1710 / Louisiane Ferlier -- Poetry and Civic Urbanism in the Coffee-House Library in the Mid-Eighteenth Century / Markman Ellis -- Of Mudfish, Harpsichords and Books: Libraries and Community in Eighteenth-Century Jamaica / April G. Shelford -- Affleck Generations: The Libraries of the Boswells of Auchinleck, 1695–1825 / James J. Caudle -- Sedition, Revolution and Libertinism in Eighteenth-Century Brazil: The Library of Naturalist José Vieira Couto / Júnia Ferreira Furtado -- Revolution and Nation Building -- Uncommon Knowledge: Late Eighteenth-Century American Subscription Library Collections / Cheryl Knott -- Reading Sheffield: Sheffield Libraries and Book Clubs, 1771–1850 / Loveday Herridge -- Challenging Institutional Ambitions: The Practice of Book Exchanges at the New York Society Library, 1789–1795 / Rob Koehler -- A “Quaint Corner” of the Reading Nation: Romantic Readerships in Rural Perthshire, 1780–1830 / Katie Halsey -- Institutionalisation and Expansion -- From Private Devotion to “Public” Education: Northern Dissenting Academy Libraries and Their Benefactors / Rachel Eckersley -- The Foundation of Plymouth Public Library: Cultural Status, Philanthropy and Expanding Readerships, 1810–1825 / Annika Bautz -- Reading on the Edge of the Atlantic: The Easton Library Company / Christopher N. Phillips -- Crafting Respectability: The Politics of Class at the Mechanic Apprentices’ Library of Boston / Lynda K. Yankaskas -- Public Libraries -- Reading Publics: Books, Communities and Readers in the Early History of American Public Libraries / Tom Glynn -- From Voluntary to State Action: Samuel Smiles, James Silk Buckingham and the Rise of the Public Library Movement in Britain / Alistair Black -- Back Matter -- Bibliography of Secondary Works.