Literacy, libraries and literature in 18th and 19th century Easter Ross

Abstract

THE PROVISION OF LIBRARIES offering even limited public access to books was somewhat haphazard before the mid-19th century. Wealthy urban communities generally had better facilities than poorer rural areas but in Scotland some of the significant collections for public use were in districts more or less remote from the main centres. Such libraries usually were founded and maintained either through the benevolence of an individual, as at Innerpeffray, or by the efforts of a community intent on advancement, as at Wanlockhead.1 Otherwise poverty, remoteness and widespread illiteracy were sufficient to prevent the development of libraries in rural areas. This paper examines the extent of the reading public in one such area-Easter Ross-and how far the provision of libraries met its needs during the 18th and 19th centuries~ Easter Ross is the northernmost portion of the eastern coastal plaIn of Scotland and may be divided into three parts. The eastern Black Isle was·, in most respects, a northern extension of lowland Moray. The remainder of Black Isle and Easter Ross proper were inhabited by a predominantly Gaelic~speaking population but their economic structure was different from the real Highlands, supporting a number of small towns and villages. The western fringes held a pastoral society which was typically Highland in its .economy and culture.2 In the eastern Black Isle, English was the language of the majority throughout ·this period but elsewhere Gaelic predominated, though some English was known in the towns and in the mid-18th century it was spreading amongst arable farmers in Easter Ross. The labouring classes remained Gaelic monoglots until well after 1800.3 1. P. Kaufman, 'The Rise of community libraries in Scotland', Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, vol. 59 (1965), pp. 258-9 and 279.