‘Very useful as well as ornamental’: social libraries in early American communities

Abstract

Responding to previous analyses of eighteenth-century subscription libraries which focus primarily on the ‘useful’ — namely, access to books — this article instead considers the ‘ornamental’ aspects of library membership. Taking the colony of New York as a case study, it explores the ways in which the members of disparate, individual proprietary libraries were active participants in a broader, Atlantic-wide social movement, balancing elements of politeness, sociability, and an emerging civic society with the practical quest for the acquisition of knowledge. Primarily comprising an analysis of the early records of the New York Society Library, this article forms a prosopographical study of the library’s membership before the American Revolution, before exploring the social, commercial and familial connections between members. It ultimately concludes that early American social libraries both shaped and were shaped by the communities which they served, and highlights the potential of biographical approaches to library history for enhancing current understandings of early American communities.