Rural Reading in Northwest England: The Sedbergh Book Club, 1728-1928

The survival of minute books for an English book club dating from the 1720s is an important and unique source for a phenomenon that has been little studied. Country book clubs represent a critical link in the development of “public” libraries. They mark a transition between the informal lending of books among friends and neighbors and the desire to institutionalize and formalize such a practice. They emerged in an era when truly “public” libraries did not exist and before commercial circulating and private subscription libraries proliferated. The educated person with an enquiring mind who might once have enjoyed access to the college or university libraries of Oxford or Cambridge either had to rely on his own purse to furnish a personal library or had recourse to an institution, such as a college, school, or parish library. Institutional libraries are by their nature exclusive as regards both clientele and stock, while parish libraries, where they existed, were generally small and selective; it was never their function to furnish current publications.