Regency Libraries by Rosemary Morris

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Regency Libraries

I am very surprised by the facts I discovered when I researched libraries in the early 19th century for my new novel, Saturday’s Child. I falsely assumed members merely visited libraries to borrow books.
Toward the end of the eighteenth-century subscription libraries became fashionable. By the Regency era subscription libraries had become an important part of fashionable life. People gathered in communal rooms where they met, read newspapers and magazines, drank coffee while chatting and gossiping, or whiled away time in peace and quiet. Some provided collections of caricatures and prints to browse through on the premises or to take out on loan. The collections were bound into large loose-leaf books and laid out on round tables for people to view them at leisure.
Ladies read magazines, which to name a few, included the very popular Ladies Magazine, Gallery of Fashion and Le Beau Monde in which were coloured fashion plates. The Lady’s Monthly Museum published articles and biographies of famous women, prints and short stories. Gentlemen chose newspapers, The Gentleman’s Magazine, and other publications. Men and women enjoyed Ackerman’s extremely popular publication ‘The Repository of Arts, Literature, Literature, Commerce, Manufacturers, Fashions and Politics.’
It was common for families such as Jane Austen’s to join a library because new books were so expensive.
Libraries sold trinkets and Jane’s sister, Lydia, saw beautiful ornaments which made her quite wild in Brighton library.
In my novel, Saturday’s Child, to be published in July, the hero assures his mother she can buy whatever she needs to paint water colours at Motts, the library she had joined in Brighton.
If she had needed to, his mother could have consulted a guidebook, published by her subscription library, which included advertisements for accommodation.
I am jealous of Regency subscribers, who, in addition to borrowing novels enjoyed musical entertainments. My small local library only contains books, a few comfortable chairs arranged around a table, where people read newspapers and magazines, and a computer room.