{"id":12234,"date":"2019-08-03T15:22:16","date_gmt":"2019-08-03T15:22:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pemberley.com\/?post_type=kbe_knowledgebase&p=12234"},"modified":"2019-08-04T16:24:53","modified_gmt":"2019-08-04T16:24:53","slug":"circulating-libraries","status":"publish","type":"kbe_knowledgebase","link":"https:\/\/pemberley.com\/?kbe_knowledgebase=circulating-libraries","title":{"rendered":"Circulating Libraries"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There is a reference to Jane Austen using a circulating library in the Jane\nInfo Pages linked here<\/a>. See\nthe fourth paragraph.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Subscription libraries were money-making concerns. There was usually a\njoining fee so that only the “best” families subscribed. They also\nhad a reputation for being full of novels, and therefore not very highbrow. It\nmight be worth mentioning that there didn’t exist anything like public library\nat the time. There were private libraries and these were mainly scholarly and\nmoral in nature and tended to cater to the interests of men (farming reports,\npolitical pamphlets, etc. etc.) but I don’t have more info about them right\nnow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But in the context of a circulating library, being a “subscriber”\nmeant something different, as in the case of Fanny Price at Portsmouth:\n“wealth is luxurious and daring” (the residue of \u00a310 ironically\ncalled “wealth”!) “And some of hers found its way to a circulating\nlibrary. She became a subscriber, a renter, a chooser of books”. Here\n“subscribing” to a library meant paying a fixed fee (often yearly)\nwhich gave you the right to take home books for a period of time (of course,\nthe “circulating libraries” were private businesses rather than\npublic amenities…). When books that were expected to appeal to circulating\nlibrary readers were first published, they were priced fairly expensively and\npublished in a multi-volume format that allowed circulating-library subscribers\nto be reading different stages of a book simultaneously (so that while one\nreader was reading volume 2, another would be starting the book with volume 1).\nIn Charles Dickens’ and Charlotte Bronte’s period, about the time that a\nmulti-volume circulating-library edition had pretty much worn out, and the\ncirculating libraries had gotten about as much revenue as they were going to\nget from the book, the publishers would then print a “cheap edition”\npriced with individual purchasers in mind, and published with smaller type, in\nfewer volumes, and made in a less rugged way that was not intended to stand up\nto normal circulating library wear and tear. (I’m not sure whether this system\nwas quite as fully developed in Jane Austen’s time; certainly no “cheap editions”\nof any of her books were published in her lifetime.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a JA letter of December 18th 1798 (referencing circulating library), she\ndoesn’t refer to Mrs. Martin as a “lady”, and in fact keeping a\ncirculating library was not quite lady-like (for one thing, a shop girl or\nfemale shop-owner has to socially interact with, and accept money from, any\nrandom male who chooses to come in the door of the shop — something that\nwasn’t considered fully compatible with being a “genteel” female);\nhowever keeping a circulating-library was perfectly respectable, and by no\nmeans as radically and totally un-genteel as some other occupations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is a reference to Jane Austen using a circulating library in the Jane Info Pages linked here. See the fourth paragraph. Subscription libraries were money-making concerns. There was usually a joining fee so that only the “best” families subscribed. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","kbe_taxonomy":[256,259,268],"kbe_tags":[290,435],"class_list":["post-12234","kbe_knowledgebase","type-kbe_knowledgebase","status-publish","hentry","kbe_taxonomy-arts-leisure","kbe_taxonomy-education","kbe_taxonomy-pride-prejudice","kbe_tags-books","kbe_tags-subscriptions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pemberley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/kbe_knowledgebase\/12234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pemberley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/kbe_knowledgebase"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pemberley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/kbe_knowledgebase"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pemberley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pemberley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12234"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pemberley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/kbe_knowledgebase\/12234\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12236,"href":"https:\/\/pemberley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/kbe_knowledgebase\/12234\/revisions\/12236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pemberley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"kbe_taxonomy","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pemberley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fkbe_taxonomy&post=12234"},{"taxonomy":"kbe_tags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pemberley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fkbe_tags&post=12234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}