‘This Revolution in the Town’: Richard Champion and the early years of the Bristol Library Society

Abstract

This article explores the motivation of the founders of subscription libraries in the second half of the eighteenth century through the case study of Richard Champion, a Dissenter from a commercial background who was deeply immersed in the political and associational life of Bristol. Having been denied the opportunity to study at university, in setting up the Bristol Library Society in 1772 Champion was driven by a desire to acquire educational opportunities through association, as well as an ambition to improve Bristol's reputation in the areas of arts and sciences. The library provided him with the political reading he needed to form close relationships with some of the leading politicians of the age, including Edmund Burke and the leaders of Burke's parliamentary party: the Marquess of Rockingham and the Duke of Portland. The case of Champion illustrates the various purposes of subscription libraries as well as their promise and potential in transforming the lives of the middling sort in Georgian Britain.