Irish Reading Societies and Circulating Libraries Founded before 1825: Useful Knowledge and Agreeable Entertainment

Abstract

Keith Manley's Irish Reading Societies and Circulating Libraries Founded before 1825: Useful Knowledge and Agreeable Entertainment concisely demonstrates the integral position held by libraries and reading societies in Irish individuals' self-improvement, literacy, and social consciousness across class and religious barriers in pre-1826 Irish society. The author takes a clear yet detailed approach to surveying early modern Irish libraries, reading societies, and related establishments. A library cataloguer for the National Trust, he has published on early modern Irish library history. He co-edited The Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain and Ireland, vol. 2, 1640–1850 (2006), which covers a larger timeline and geographic expanse than the current work. His 2012 work, Books, Borrowers, and Shareholders: Scottish Circulating and Subscription Libraries before 1825, covers the same period and also includes a list of libraries, but focuses on commercial libraries.This monograph is in chronological order; topic, social class, and library type further divide distinct sections. The author begins with the book culture of Ireland before 1800: the complicated ties between religion, book selling, and libraries in the region. Then he discusses working class's early reading societies, and the middle class's subscription libraries. Circulating libraries are in two key chapters. James Hoey Senior was the first Irish bookseller who by 1737 started charging for books by their size. The other details bookselling after the Act of Union of 1800 as well as the evolution of circulating libraries. Two chapters discuss middle-class subscription libraries, which were often found in the largest municipalities. Knowledge-promoting societies often ran these fee-based libraries. While they could be specialist subscription libraries they were often social clubs that held meetings, conducted voting, sold shares, and sold newspapers. Reading societies established after 1800 spread ideas for self-improvement, were less political, adjusted income-based charges, and facilitated individual self-education across social classes. They also helped start the call for a national education system that came to fruition in 1831. Most religious institutions collected books. While some religious libraries were open to the public, others such as Quaker libraries were only available to members.Manley successfully integrates case studies into different chapters. Chapbooks, or Burton books, were cheap popular fiction bought by Irish people interested in popular fiction at a low price. Manley skillfully uses chapbooks as examples of inexpensive popular fiction. Chapbooks are used as case studies in his discussions of reactionary societies, such as the Cheap Book Society, and restrictions on children's reading materials. Sir Charles Gavan Duffy is another case study. Manley detailed how reading from libraries helped influence Duffy's founding of the newspaper The Nation. He also discusses the lead-up to Duffy's political career where he became the governor of Victoria-Australia. These are just two of many case studies he extrapolates from primary sources, archival materials, and specialized secondary sources.The thirty-six-page list of libraries is an impressive directory for Irish libraries, literary societies, book clubs, and the like. This is a valuable resource for students and academics in history and related humanities interested in early modern Ireland. It adds to the already astoundingly detailed information in this volume.We are in the midst of the rise of book history and tangential interdisciplinary fields. John Hinks and Matthew Day's edited collection From Compositors to Collectors: Essays on Book-Trade History (2012) focuses on predominantly British publications and book collectors and, while focusing on the book trade, has many intersections with library history and book history. A key distinction is how Hinks and Day chose papers focusing on text distribution, creation, and reception presented at Print Networks conferences between 2006 and 2009. While the whole of Manley's text focuses on circulating libraries and reading societies, only seven of the nineteen essays in Hinks and Day's work focus on specific libraries, circulating collections, or librarians.This comprehensive yet thorough monograph is appropriate for academics especially specialists in the history of the book, early modernists, and library historians.