Norwich City Library and its Intellectual Milieu, 1608-1825

This thesis examines some of the reasons that may have lain behind the foundation of Norwich library in 1608. It provides a prosopographical account of the ministers, doctors, teachers and other professional men who were members of the Library in the years 1656 to 1735, the period for which minutes of the activities of the membership survive. In the absence of any surviving personal papers, the sermons and tracts published by these men are assessed for the light they throw on their intellectual interests and, by extension, on the interests of an important section of the Norwich elite.

The study of the Library's membership illuminates current debates on the 'urban renaissance', 'politeness,' 'sociability', the 'public sphere', the 'reading revolution,' the English enlightenment, professionalisation and the emergence of a provincial intelligentsia. The contents of the Library are analysed as a representation of the web of knowledge. What clues do the books provide about the intellectual preoccupations of the members and the donors? The first catalogue of the library, produced in 1658, is analysed on the basis of how the subjects the library contained were categorised. Which parts of the collection did the compilers choose to highlight and why?

The life and work of Sir Thomas Browne represents one of the members' readily discernible intellectual interests. One of the founders of the library, John Whitefoot, was a life-long friend of Browne and wrote his biography. Whitefoot and Browne also had a mutual friend in bishop Joseph Hall. In 1656 Whitefoot delivered Hall's funeral sermon and Hall is remembered with some affection in Browne's published works.