Skip to main content
What types of page to search?

Popular pages: Undergraduate Postgraduate PhD Accommodation Research International students

Alternatively use our A-Z index.

Further reading

Please find below reading lists for project publications, reference works - both online and print, and secondary sources.

Project publications

Resources used for identifying books, libraries and people

The general resources listed below were consulted to help the team identify books, libraries and people across the database. ECLO library records list resources used to identify members at specific libraries.

With historical information on the vast majority of library members being difficult and often exceptionally challenging to track down, relying on meticulous and time-consuming research in archival repositories, there were limits to how much we could find out during the four years of funding. The project team therefore made the difficult decision from the outset to prioritise biographical research for those libraries with whom we were partnering and for those libraries for which borrowing records survive. For other libraries, we sought as a minimum to collate the names of library members (where given) and to present biographical information provided in library documentation (which usually includes prefixes and suffixes, and sometimes provides occupations), while also undertaking systematic searches for named individuals within contemporary commercial directories.

This means that there is still plenty of more detailed research to do, and the project will continue to search for information on members’ lives, adding this information to the database in future updates listed on the Citing the database page.

Reference works – websites

Reference works – printed

  • Bailey's British Directory; or, merchant's and trader's useful companion, for the year 1784, in four volumes (4 vols., London, 1784)
  • Bailey's Northern Directory, or, merchant's and tradesman's useful companion, for the year 1781. Containing An Alphabetical List of the Names and Places of Abode of the Bankers, Merchants, Manufacturers, and other Eminent Traders, in Every Principal Town From the River Trent to Berwick upon Tweed; with the Cities of London and Westminster, Edinburgh, and Glasgow. Compiled with Great Care and Accuracy (Warrington, Birmingham and London, 1781)
  • Balfour Paul, James, ed., The Scots Peerage; founded on Wood’s edition of Sir Robert Douglas’s peerage of Scotland; containing an historical and genealogical account of the nobility of that kingdom Volume VIII (Edinburgh: David Douglas, 1904)
  • Bertie, David, Scottish Episcopal Clergy 1689- 2000, (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2000)
  • Burke, B., A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland, 4th ed., 2 vols. (London, 1862-63)
  • Cokayne, G. E. (ed.), The Complete Baronetage, 1603-1800, 5 vols. (Exeter, 1900-1909)
  • Cokayne, G. E. (ed.), The Complete Peerage, 12 vols. (London, 1910-1959)
  • Garside, Peter, James Raven and Rainer Schowerling (eds.), The English Novel 1770-1829: A Bibliographical Survey of Prose Fiction Published in the British Isles Volume 1: 1770-1799 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)
  • Scott, Hew, Fasti Ecclesiæ Scoticanæ; The Succession of Ministers in the Church of Scotland from the Reformation, (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1915-1928)
  • Simmons, Samuel Foart, Medical Register (London, 1779-83).

Secondary sources

The list below contains general work on the history of subscription libraries in this period, or scholarship that has been useful in developing our methodological approach. ECLO library records list scholarship on specific libraries.

  • Allan, David, ‘“The Advantages of Literature”: The Subscription Library in Georgian Britain’, in Alice Crawford (ed.), The Meaning of the Library: A Cultural History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), pp. 103-23
  • Allan, David, ‘Eighteenth-Century Private Subscription Libraries and Provincial Urban Culture: The Amicable Society of Lancaster, 1769-c.1820’, Library History, 17.1 (2001), pp. 57-76
  • Allan, David, A Nation of Readers. The Lending Library in Georgian England (London: British Library, 2008)
  • Allan, David, ‘Politeness and the Politics of Culture: An Intellectual History of the Eighteenth-Century Subscription Library’, Library & Information History, 29.3 (2013), pp. 159-69
  • Allan, David, ‘Provincial Readers and Book Culture in the Scottish Enlightenment: The Perth Library, 1784-c.1800’, The Library, 4 (2002), pp. 367-89
  • Allan, David, ‘Some Methods and Problems in the History of Reading: Georgian England and the Scottish Enlightenment’, Journal of the Historical Society, 3 (2003), pp. 91-124
  • Altick, Richard, The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1800-1900 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957)
  • Amory, Hugh, and David D. Hall (eds.), The History of the Book, Volume 1: The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World (Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000)
  • Augst, Thomas, and Kenneth Carpenter (eds.), Institutions of Reading: The Social Life of Libraries in the United States (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2007)
  • Augst, Thomas, and Wayne A. Wiegand, The Library as an Agency of Culture; Special Issue on Culture and Libraries, America Studies, 42.3 (Fall 2001)
  • Beckwith, Frank, ‘The Eighteenth-Century Proprietary Library in England’, Journal of Documentation, 3.2 (1947), pp. 81-98
  • Bowd, Rebecca, ‘Useful Knowledge or Polite Learning? A Reappraisal of Approaches to Subscription Library History’, Library & Information History, 29.3 (2012), pp. 182-95
  • Bowd, Rebecca, ‘Subscription Libraries and the Development of Urban Culture in the Age of Revolution: the case of Leeds, 1768-1832’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Leeds, 2016
  • Burrows, Simon, ‘Locating the Minister’s Looted Books: From Provenance and Library History to the Digital Reconstruction of Print Culture’, Library & Information History, 31.1 (2015), pp. 1-17
  • Burrows, Simon, et al, ‘Mapping Print, Connecting Cultures’, Library & Information History, 32.4 (2016), pp. 259-71
  • Colclough, Stephen, Consuming Texts: Readers and Reading Communities, 1695–1870 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)
  • Cole, Richard C., ‘Community Lending Libraries in Eighteenth-Century Ireland’, Library Quarterly, 44:2(1974), pp. 111-23
  • Crawford, John, ‘The Community Library in Scottish History’, IFLA Journal, 28.5-6 (2002), pp. 245-55
  • Crawford, John, ‘Reading and Book Use in 18th-Century Scotland’, The Biblioteck, 19 (1994), pp. 23-43
  • Crawford, John, ‘‘‘The high state of culture to which this part of the country has attained”: Libraries, Reading, and Society in Paisley, 1760-1830’, Library & Information History, 30 (2014), pp. 172-94
  • Crone, Rosalind, Katie Halsey, W.R. Owens and Shafquat Towheed (eds.), The History of Reading, 3 vols. (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)
  • Dunstan, Vivienne S., ‘Glimpses into a Town’s Reading Habits in Enlightenment Scotland: Analysing the Borrowings of Gray Library, Haddington, 1732–1816’, Journal of Scottish Historical Studies, 26.1-2 (2006), pp. 42-59
  • Dunstan, Vivienne S., Reading Habits in Scotland circa 1750–1820, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Dundee, 2010
  • Felsenstein, Frank, and James J. Connolly, What Middletown Read: Print Culture in an American Small City (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2015).
  • Fergus, Jan, Provincial Readers in Eighteenth-Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006)
  • Fergus, Jan, ‘Eighteenth-Century Readers in Provincial England: The Customers of Samuel Clay’s Circulating Library and Bookshop in Warwick, 1770-1772’, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 78 (1984), pp. 155-213
  • Ford, Christy, ‘“An Honour to the Place”: Reading Associations and Improvement’, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 38 (2015), pp. 555-68.
  • Gross, Robert A., and Mary Kelley (eds.) A History of the Book in America, Volume 2: An Extensive Republic: Print, Culture, and Society in the New Nation, 1790-1840 (Worcester, MA: American Antiquarian Society, 2010)
  • Halsey, Katie, and Rosalind Crone, ‘On Collecting, Cataloguing and Collating the Evidence of Reading: The “RED movement” and its implications for digital scholarship’, in Toni Weller (ed.), History in the Digital Age (London: Routledge, 2012), pp. 95-110
  • Halsey, Katie, and Matthew Sangster, with Brian Aitken, Karen Baston, Maxine Branagh-Miscampbell, Alex Deans, Jaqueline Kennard, Gerard McKeever, and Joshua J. Smith, ‘”(S)ht not thy Heart, nor thy Library”: Realising the potential of Historical Library Borrowing Data’, in Library Catalogues as Data: Research, Practice and Usage, ed. by Paul Gooding, Melissa Terras, and Sarah Ames (London: Facet Publishing, 2025), pp. 121-143
  • Joynes, Sarah, ‘The Sheffield Library, 1771-1907’, Library History, 2.3 (January 1971), pp. 91-116
  • Kaufman, Paul, Borrowings from the Bristol Library, 1773-1784: A Unique Record of Reading Vogues (Charlottesville: Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia, 1960)
  • Kaufman, Paul, ‘The Community Library: A Chapter in English Social History’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 57.7(1967), pp. 1-67
  • Kaufman, Paul, Libraries and their Users: Collected Papers in Library History (London: The Library Association, 1969)
  • Kelly, Thomas, Early Public Libraries: A History of Public Libraries in Great Britain before 1850 (London: The Library Association, 1966)
  • Lindsay, Christy, ‘Reading Associations in England and Scotland, c.1760-1830’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Oxford, 2016
  • Mandelbrote, G., and Manley, K. A. (eds.), The Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain and Ireland, Volume 2: 1640-1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)
  • Manley, K.A., Books, Borrowers, and Shareholders: Scottish Circulating and Subscription Libraries Before 1825 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Bibliographical Society, 2012)
  • Manley, Keith A., ‘Jeremy Bentham has been Banned: Contention and Censorship in Private Subscription Libraries before 1825’, Library & Information History, 29 (2013), pp. 170-81
  • Manley, Keith A., ‘Infidel Books and “Factories of the Enlightenment”: Censorship and Surveillance in Subscription and Circulating Libraries in an Age of Revolutions, 1790-1850’, Book History, 19 (2017), pp. 169-96
  • Manley, Keith A., Irish Reading Societies and Circulating Libraries Founded Before 1825: Useful Knowledge and Agreeable Entertainment (Dublin: Four Courts, 2018)
  • McHenry, Elizabeth, Forgotten Readers: Recovering the Lost History of African-American Literary Societies (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002)
  • McMullen, Haynes, ‘The Founding of Social Libraries in Pennsylvania, 1731-1876’, Pennsylvania History, 32 (April 1965), pp. 130-52
  • Moore, Sean D., Slavery and the Making of Early American Libraries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019)
  • Morris, Robert J., ‘Voluntary Societies and British Urban Elites, 1780-1850: An Analysis’, The Historical Journal, 26 (1983), pp. 95-118
  • Olsen, Mark, and Louis-Georges Harvey, ‘Reading in Revolutionary Times: Book Borrowing from the Harvard College Library, 1773–1782’, Harvard Library Bulletin, 4 (1993), pp. 57–72
  • Pearson, Jacqueline, Women’s Reading in Britain, 1750-1835: A Dangerous Recreation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)
  • Pettegree, Andrew, and Arthur Der Weduwen, The Library: A Fragile History (London: Profile Books, 2021)
  • Potten, Ed, ‘The Dissenting Academies Online Virtual Library System: What Middletown Read: The Reading Experience Database’, The Library, 13.1 (2012), pp. 351–55
  • Raven, James, The Business of Books: Booksellers and the English Book Trade, 1450-1850 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007)
  • Raven, James, London Booksellers and American Customers. Transatlantic Literary Community and the Charleston Library Society, 1748-1811 (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2002)
  • Raven, James, Helen Small and Naomi Tadmor (eds.), The Practice and Representation of Reading in England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)
  • Roberts, Daphne, and Bob Duckett, ‘The Bradford Library and Literary Society, 1774–1980’, Library History, 22 (2006), pp. 213–26
  • Rose, Jonathan, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001)
  • Rose, Jonathan, ‘Rereading the English Common Reader: A Preface to a History of Audiences.’ Journal of the History of Ideas, 53 (1992), pp. 41-70
  • Sangster, Matthew, Karen Baston, and Brian Aitken, ‘Reconstructing Student Reading Habits in Eighteenth-Century Glasgow: Enlightenment Systems and Digital Reconfigurations, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 54.4 (2021), pp. 935-55
  • Sher, Richard B., The Enlightenment and the Book: Scottish Authors and their Publishers in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Ireland and America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007)
  • Shera, Jesse, Foundations of the Public Library. The Origins of The Public Library Movement in New England, 1629–1855 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949)
  • Smith, Joshua J., The Politics of Reading at the British Subscription Library, 1789-1832 (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming)
  • St Clair, William, The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)
  • Taylor, Archer, Book Catalogues: Their Varieties and Uses (Chicago: Newberry Library, 1957)
  • Towsey, Mark, ‘All Partners May Be Enlightened and Improved by Reading Them: The Distribution of Enlightenment Books in Scottish Subscription Library Catalogues, 1750-c.1820’, Journal of Scottish Historical Studies, 28 (2007), pp. 20-43
  • Towsey, Mark, ‘Book Use and Sociability in Lost Libraries of the Eighteenth Century: Towards a Union Catalogue’, in F. Bruni and A. Pettegree (eds.), Lost Books: Reconstructing the Print World of Pre-Industrial Europe (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2016), pp. 414-38
  • Towsey, Mark, ‘First Steps in Associational Reading: Book Use and Sociability at the Wigtown Subscription Library 1795–99’, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 103.4 (2009), pp. 455-95
  • Towsey, Mark, ‘Imprisoned Reading: Napoleonic Prisoners of War at the Selkirk Subscription Library, 1809-1815’, in Eve Rosenhaft, Erica Charters and Hannah Smith (eds.), Civilians and War in Europe, 1640-1815 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2012), pp. 241-61
  • Towsey, Mark, Reading the Scottish Enlightenment: Books and their Readers in Provincial Scotland, 1750–1820 (Leiden: Brill, 2010)
  • Towsey, Mark, Reading History in Britain and America, c.1750-c.1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019)
  • Towsey, Mark, ‘Store their Minds with Much Valuable Knowledge’: Agricultural Improvement at the Selkirk Subscription Library, 1799-1814’, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 38.4 (2015), pp. 569-84
  • Towsey, Mark, & Kyle B. Roberts (eds.), Before the Public Library: Reading, Community, and Identity in the Atlantic World, 1650–1850 (Leiden: Brill, 2017)
  • Williams, Abigail, The Social Life of Books: Reading Together in the Eighteenth-Century Home (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2017)
  • Yankaskas, Lynda K., ‘Origin Stories: The Boston Athenaeum, Transatlantic Literary Culture, and Regional Rivalry in the Early Republic’, The New England Quarterly, 89 (2016), pp. 614-42.