Quote:
Originally Posted by cian
Actually the first public libraries were opened in the early C17th. Bristol had one, and Manchester claims (falsely, probably) to have had the first in the 1650s. What you're referring to is the Public Libraries Act of the 1850s, but there were over 200 subscription libraries (some of which were widely accessed by the working man, and were intended for that purpose) in England, and about the same in Scotland. The Public libraries act made membership free, but that's more a matter of public funding, than anything to do with fundamental lending/borrowing rights. Many of the earlier libraries were owned and run by towns, even if membership was not free.
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Yes, thanks, I was aware of that
. I used the term "public library" to mean a library that was free to use, as opposed to a subscription library which (obviously) one had to pay for. One might very reasonably say that it was the mass opening of public libraries after the 1850 Public Libraries Act which brought reading to the masses, since books were, at the time, extremely expensive. It was also, of course, the primary reason for the traditional 3 volume format of the Victorian novel - libraries were the biggest buyer of them, and the 3 volume format meant that 3 readers could be reading the same book simultaneously.