Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T07:23:15.692Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Disciplining and Disinfecting Working-Class Readers in the Victorian Public Library

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Lewis C. Roberts
Lewis C. Roberts
Affiliation:
Indiana University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In an uncharacteristic burst of rhetoric and emotion, the 1849 Select Committee on Public Libraries implored:

Shall we therefore abandon the people to the influence of a low, enfeebling, and often pestilential literature, instead of enabling them to breathe a more pure, elevated, and congenial atmosphere? (viii)

The means of bringing about such a literate atmosphere was the funding of a system of public libraries, institutions freely open to all, but especially aimed at working-class readers. These institutions would provide access to books unavailable to the working-class reading public. In providing such access, the libraries were also to ensure that books would be free of the “pestilential” influences of the “low” kinds of texts commonly available to the working class. The public library was thus to purify, elevate, and disinfect working-class reading.

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , Spring 1998 , pp. 105 - 132
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

WORKS CITED

Altick, Richard D. The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1800–1900. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1957.Google Scholar
Arnold, Matthew. Culture and Anarchy. Ed. Lipman, Samuel. New Haven: Yale UP, 1994.Google Scholar
Axon, William. “Free Public Libraries of Great Britain.” Companion to the [British] Almanac for 1869. 1869. 23–40.Google Scholar
Bailin, Miriam. The Sickroom in Victorian Fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Trans. Nice, Richard. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1984.Google Scholar
Carlton, Grace. Spade-Work: The Story of Thomas Greenwood. London: Hutchinson, 1949.Google Scholar
Chartier, Roger. The Order of Books. Trans. Cochrane, Lydia G.. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1994.Google Scholar
Cotgreave, Alfred. Views and Memoranda of Public Libraries. London: Library Aids Co., 1901.Google Scholar
Edwards, Edward. Free Town Libraries, Their Formation, Management, and History. London: Trubner, 1869.Google Scholar
Edwards, Edward. “Libraries and the People.” British Quarterly Review 11 (1850): 61–80.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Sheridan, Alan. New York: Vintage, 1979.Google Scholar
Fox, Pamela. Class Fictions: Shame and Resistance in the British Working-Class Novel, 1890–1945. Durham: Duke UP, 1994.Google Scholar
Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Trans. Ramos, Myra Bergman. New York: Continuum, 1990.Google Scholar
Giroux, Henry A. Border Crossings: Cultural Workers and the Politics of Education. New York: Routledge. 1992.Google Scholar
Greenwood, Thomas. Public Libraries: A History of the Movement and a Manual for the Organization and Management of Rate-Supported Libraries. 4th ed. London: Cassell, 1891.Google Scholar
Griest, Guinevere. Mudie's Circulating Library and the Victorian Novel. Bloomington: Indiana UP. 1970.Google Scholar
Humphrey, George R. “The Reading of the Working Classes.” Nineteenth Century 33 (1893): 690–701.Google Scholar
Jevons, W. Stanley. “The Rationale of Free Public Libraries.” Contemporary Review 39 (1881): 385–402.Google Scholar
Jones, Graham. “Political and Social Factors in the Advocacy of ‘Free’ Libraries in the United Kingdom, 1801–1922.” Diss. University of Strathclyde (Scotland), 1971.Google Scholar
Kelly, Thomas. Early Public Libraries: A History of Public Libraries in Great Britain before 1850. London: Library Association, 1966.Google Scholar
Laclau, Ernesto and Mouffe, Chantal. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London: Verso, 1985.Google Scholar
“Libraries for Working Men.” Penny Magazine 2 (1833): 373–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Minto, John. A History of the Public Library Movement in Great Britain and Ireland. London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1932.Google Scholar
Munford, W. A. Penny Rate: Aspects of British Public Library History 1850–1950. London: Library Association, 1951.Google Scholar
Murison, W. J. The Public Library: Its Origins, Purpose, and Significance. London: Harrap, 1971.Google Scholar
Ogle, John J. The Free Library: Its History and Present Condition. London: George Allen, 1898.Google Scholar
[Oliphant, Margaret.] “The Byways of Literature: Reading for the Million.” Blackwood's Magazine 84 (1858): 200–16.Google Scholar
Olle, James. Library History. London: Bingley, 1971.Google Scholar
Predeek, Albert. A History of Libraries in Great Britain and North America. Chicago: American Library Association, 1947.Google Scholar
“Public Libraries.” North British Review 15 (May-August 1851): 160–84.Google Scholar
Public Library Committee. Report from the Select Committee on Public Libraries with the Proceedings for the Committee, Minutes of Evidence, Appendix and Index. 1849. (584) 17.1 mf 53. 141–45.Google Scholar
Radway, Janice A. “Reading Is Not Eating: Mass-Produced Literature and the Theoretical, Methodological, and Political Consequences of a Metaphor.” Book Research Quarterly 2 (1986): 7–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scribner, Sylvia. “Literacy in Three Metaphors.” Perspectives on Literacy. Ed. Kintgen, Eugene R., Kroll, Barry M., and Rose, Mike. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 1988. 71–81.Google Scholar
Sutherland, J. A. Victorian Novelists and Publishers. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1976.Google Scholar
Vrettos, Athena. Somatic Fictions. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1995.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, Raymond. Marxism and Literature. Oxford UP, 1989.Google Scholar
Wiltshire, John. Jane Austen and the Body. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wright, Thomas. “Concerning the Unknown Public.” Topics of the Times: Studies in Literature. Ed. Coan, Titus Munson. Putnum, 1883: 230–67.Google Scholar
Wright, Thomas. “On a Possible Popular Culture.” Contemporary Review 40 (1881): 25–44.Google Scholar