A Nation of Readers
The Lending Library in Georgian England
Winner of the 2010 Eliza Atkins Gleason Book Award
Reading was one of Georgian England's defining obsessions,
holding numberless individuals in thrall and serving also as the natural focus of intensive comment and controversy.
This pioneering study of its context explores the origins,
organisation and impact of book clubs, reading societies,
subscription libraries and circulating libraries, together with the opportunities increasingly offered to readers by a variety of other collections, including those provided by religious, educational and recreational institutions.
A Nation of Readers argues that the proliferation of library facilities greatly extended the quantity and diversity of texts available. It also suggests that the resulting circulation of books on a previously unimaginable scale made possible the creation
of a substantial and broadly based reading public, thereby
adding immeasurably to the cultural vitality that so
distinguished Georgian England.
David Allan is Reader in History at the University of St Andrews and has held visiting fellowships at several universities including Harvard and Yale. His most recent books are Scotland in the Eighteenth Century: Union and Enlightenment (2002) and Adam Ferguson (2006).
