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The Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain and Ireland

Edited by Alistair Black, Peter Hoare

Book DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521780971

Online ISBN: 9781139055321

Hardback ISBN: 9780521780971

Chapter

11 - Circulating libraries in the Victorian age and after pp. 125-146

Chapter DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521780971.013

Cambridge University Press

11

Circulating libraries in the Victorian ageand after

s imon eliot

Introduction

Circulating and subscription libraries overlapped and frequently shared manycharacteristics, so the distinction between them is often rather arbitrary.Indeed, occasionally circulating libraries referred to themselves as ‘subscrip-tion’ libraries, and vice versa. Nevertheless, most subscription libraries had adifferent origin from circulating libraries. Many evolved out of small, privatebook clubs during the eighteenth century and shared many of their character-istics. They tended to have rather high annual subscriptions, they sometimesrequired subscribers to take a share in the library and they frequently concen-trated on ‘serious’ subjects (theology, philosophy, history, biography, travel,etc.) to the exclusion or underrepresentation of fiction. However, with thegrowing production and consumption of fiction – particularly in the form ofthe novel – such libraries were never going to satisfy what many would haveregarded as a vulgar demand. This was left to commerce, and commerce waswhat circulating libraries were all about. The circulating library was certainlya success in its time: the Library History Database to ! "# $ currently lists 5,481circulating libraries or 44.5% of all the institutions recorded.1

It is no coincidence that circulating libraries and the novel rose together.As commercial organisations, their subscription rates were closely tailored totheir market. One might subscribe on a yearly, quarterly or monthly basis.Some libraries allowed shorter subscription periods offering a weekly or evena daily rate; these shorter subscriptions could be frequently found in small cir-culating libraries serving poorer areas or in libraries with a distinctly seasonaltrade (such as spa towns and seaside resorts). Some circulating libraries chargedby the volume borrowed (with or without a security deposit). Most circulat-ing libraries, of whatever size, were general in content, that is, they stocked

1 As at 19 August 1998, see http://www.r-alston.co.uk/stat.htm.

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libraries of our own

fiction and non-fiction; additionally they commonly had some reference works,newspapers and magazines on offer.

But the generality and the commercialism of circulating libraries oftenwent further. It has been remarked that specialised book shops were rarein the past, most selling many more things than books. Similarly, circulat-ing libraries were a focus for other forms of commercial activity, often butnot always print related. Sometimes the library was the main focus of activ-ity, with other sales being added to it; in many other cases the circulatinglibrary was simply an appendage to other, and probably more profitable,activities. Suppliers of stationery, printed forms, books, newspapers and mag-azines could also advertise a circulating library on the premises but in practicethis might be no more than a few shelves of miscellaneous titles. This waseven more likely to be the case if the shop sold items more remote from thoseof the book trade: groceries, patent medicines, musical instruments or fancygoods. Even the largest circulating libraries offered other services. Lovejoy’slibrary in Reading was, by 1887, performing many roles: insurance agent, pub-lisher of an ‘Estates Register’, seller of board games, stationer and newsagent,seller of leather goods, seller of maps and travel guides, bookbinder, printer,engraver, die-sinker and relief-stamper – and running a rare-book finding ser-vice.2 Advertisements for businesses for sale in the book trade journals of thelater nineteenth century frequently mentioned a circulating library as partof the business, though often it was placed rather far down in the list ofattractions.

One of the reasons for this diversity – and it is something of a paradox forlibraries of a commonly commercial character – was that it seems to havebeen difficult over most of our period for circulating libraries to generatesufficient profits to be stand-alone enterprises. Partly this was due to theproblem confronting any commercial library that was trying to satisfy tworather different sorts of customer: those who were essentially wanting to readthe latest fashionable and popular books (commonly novels), and those whowanted to read canonical works of fiction and/or non-fiction. Holding thebalance between a rich stock of books always available for borrowing and

2 A catalogue of the books in the General Subscription Circulating Library at Reading (Reading,[1887]). The library had been established by George Loveday in 1832 and in its mid-Victorian heyday attracted the likes of Thackeray, Wilkie Collins, Charles Kingsley andCharles Dickens through its doors. A feature of the library was its collection of ‘rare andvaluable Editions of Mr Ruskin’s Works’ which, by 1887, had been turned into a referencecollection.

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Circulating libraries

a large enough range of multiple copies of currently in-demand titles was atricky business. However, it needed to be done efficiently and continuously ifthe library were to satisfy a diverse range of readers and make them think itworthwhile to renew their subscriptions.

Most circulating libraries were not as well founded or as large as thosedescribed below, and this fact of scale is important. Most users of small circu-lating libraries would have experienced both a quantitative and a qualitativedifference. Obviously there would be fewer books to borrow, fewer copies ofpopular works and a longer delay in getting the most recent books (indeed,many would have had to wait until surplus copies from larger libraries beganto filter down or cheap reprints were produced). But a recent analysis has sug-gested that smaller libraries tended to stock conservatively: in such libraries thepercentage of canonical works went up and the proportion of less-well-knowntitles went down. In libraries with between 2,000 and 3,000 titles 40–60% mightbe canonical. In libraries with fewer than 500 titles that percentage might beas high as 70–90%.3

It is likely that the circulating libraries that got closest to independent prof-itability were those that serviced specialist markets. There were circulatinglibraries such as Lewis’s Library at 186 Gower Street devoted to scientific andtechnical books.4 There was the Universal Circulating Musical Library at 86Newgate Street, established early in 1853 and run first by C. J. Graue then byGustav Scheurmann & Co., and Novello’s Music Library at 1 Berners Street,both lending printed music.5 In the 1930s there was the Circulating Library ofthe Children’s Book Club at 17 Connaught Street.6 There were also librariesthat offered exclusively foreign texts such as Rolandi’s at 20 Berners Street thatin 1849 stocked over 1,400 books in Italian and Spanish.7

Libraries in special locations catering to a transient but affluent clientele,such as those in fashionable seaside resorts or spa towns, would also be in

3 F. Moretti, Atlas of the European novel ! "$$–!%$$ (London, 1998), 144–8.4 For example, Catalogue of Lewis’s Medical & Scientific Library [. . .] New edition revised to

Midsummer ! ""& (London, 1888).5 Graue published the Catalogue of the Universal Circulating Musical Library (London, [1853]),

describing it as ‘Importers of Foreign Music, and Publishers’. A later catalogue ‘includingthe Supplements of 1855 & 1856’ was published by Scheurmann, and claimed that thelibrary contained ‘upwards of 50,000 distinct works’.

6 Catalogue of the Circulating Library of the Children’s Book Club (London, April 1933). Thelibrary was opened in December 1931.

7 Libri italiani & spagnoli: Catalogue of Italian and Spanish Books with a few in Portuguese, lentto read by P. Rolandi, at his French, Italian, German, and Spanish Circulating Library (London,1849).

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an advantageous position. For instance, in Scarborough in 1868 there were atleast nine libraries of a commercial character, five of which were located inbooksellers’ and stationers’ shops, for a population of around 18,000 people.8

In Bath in 1852 there were thirteen circulating libraries and two specialising inmusic; despite the growth of public libraries there were still eleven in 1902 andfour as late as 1952.9 Circulating libraries abroad stocking English books andcatering to a transient population by offering subscriptions on a weekly, fort-nightly or monthly basis, such as B. Maurer’s circulating library in ‘Trinkhalle1’ at Bad Schwalbach, would also be in an advantageous position.10

Small circulating libraries remote from other forms of textual competitionmight also flourish. In 1865 the Bala Circulating Library had around 448 titles(some 330 in English, 118 in Welsh) which were overwhelmingly non-fictionalwith strong religious content; subscription was just two shillings a year butthe library was only open 8.00–9.00 pm on a Monday.11 In the mid-twentiethcentury, at a time when most large circulating libraries were closing, small cir-culating libraries survived, commonly in working-class areas and often called‘twopenny libraries’ from the cost of hiring a book, offering westerns andformula romances of the Mills and Boon type (a similar phenomenon couldbe found in Australia in the 1930s and 1940s).12

Such specialist institutions had a number of economic advantages over moregeneral and larger circulating libraries. First, they served a well-defined andhomogeneous market whose needs and wants might be easier to anticipate.Second, being specialist they bought from a smaller range of publishers andthus found it easier to be comprehensive within their narrower range. Third,they dealt in materials that users commonly would not wish or need to own, soborrowing was a first, not a second choice of the library’s subscribers. Fourth,in the case of the specialist middle-class libraries, many of these publicationswere not likely to be subject to rapid cheap reprinting that might inclinethe user to wait to buy rather than to borrow. In the case of small and or

8 A directory of Scarborough & Falsgrave ! "'" (Scarborough: S. W. Theakston, 1868).9 A directory for the city and borough of Bath, and its environs (Bath, 1852); The Post Office

directory !%$( (Bath, 1902); Kelly’s Directory of Bath and neighbourhood (London, 1952).10 List of English books B. Maurer Circulating Library (Bad Schwalbach, c. 1900). This list

had many novels listed in two-volume form which suggest a strong dependence onTauchnitz editions. Peter Hoare has also drawn my attention to the Gabinetto Vieusseuxin Florence, ‘much used by expatriates in the season in the nineteenth century’, and toa D. R. Marx who ran a ‘British & Foreign Circulating Library and Reading Room’in Baden-Baden (Catalogue of English books, 1864); he also ran a German and a Frenchcirculating library. See A. Martino, Die deutsche Leihbibliothek (Wiesbaden, 1990), 992.

11 Catalogue of the Bala Circulating Library (Bala, [c.1865]).12 M. Lyons and J. Arnold (eds.), A history of the book in Australia ! "%!–!%)# (St Lucia,

Queensland, 2001), 191–9.

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local libraries, there was often an additional advantage: they offered a flexiblepayment system which allowed hire of individual volumes for short periods(even just over-night) with no formal subscription.13

How did a normal circulating library make its money? A consistent and,if possible, growing subscriber base was vital in order to provide a librarywith a reliable, long-term income. Take the one guinea a year charge byMudie’s which entitled a subscriber to borrow one volume at a time. Thisannual subscription rate represented an income to the library of 0.69 of an oldpenny (d) per day or 4.85d a week per subscriber. Roughly speaking, therefore,a borrowed volume in the hands of an average subscriber was earning thelibrary 0.69d a day. Higher subscriptions that allowed the borrowing of morethan one volume at a time represented better value for the subscriber but lessincome per volume borrowed for the library.

Books varied substantially in price but, for sake of argument, let us takea book that cost the library 5s or 60d. Given the trade practice of offeringthirteen copies for the price of twelve, this unit price might be reduced to55.25d. Ignoring all other costs, the library in question would therefore have tolend that volume for a minimum of eighty subscriber-days (or eleven weeksthree days) to recover its bare costs before any profit could be generated.

But it is not enough to get books off the shelves and into the hands ofborrowers. Any library worth its salt has to have a large quantity of its stockavailable on the shelves for borrowing. This means that a high proportion ofbooks bought by a library was, at any given time, not earning its keep by beingloaned out. This put more pressure on the volumes that were borrowed andextended the time before they began to make a profit. Of course, there wouldbe subscribers who did not borrow all the time, and for the times they werenon-borrowers they represented income with very little cost to the library.

The calculations above ignore a number of factors, the most importantof which would have been running costs (including rent, interest payments,heating, lighting, etc.) and labour. Work in a closed-shelf library is labourintensive. At the height of his activities Mudie, for instance, was employingsome 250 people in his library, very few of whom were casual labour.14 Labourcosts in the nineteenth century were much lower than now, but neverthelesssuch a workforce must have represented a significant and regular drain on the

13 The Catalogue of J. Marston’s Circulating Library, Mosley Street, Newcastle-on-Tyne(Newcastle, 1858) offered 2,325 titles which could be borrowed at the rate of ‘one pennyper volume each night’. In A Catalogue of F. T. Vibert’s Circulating Library, Market Place,Penzance (Penzance, [185?]) non-subscribers were offered a rate of twopence per volumefor four days.

14 G. L. Griest, Mudie’s Circulating Library & the Victorian novel (Bloomington, IN, 1970), 31.

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resources of any middling-to-large circulating library. Given all these additionalcosts, it is unlikely that a volume could make much profit unless it circulatedfor between nine months and a year.

In order to reduce the time before profits were made on a given volume,a circulating library needed to buy its books as cheaply as possible, eitherby buying titles at a substantial discount from publishers or, in the case ofa smaller or more remote library, buying second-hand copies from larger,metropolitan libraries. For this reason, although we shall mostly be looking atthe larger libraries, we need to think of the post-1850 circulating libraries notas individual units but as part of an interdependent system. The large librariessuch as Mudie’s and Smith’s could negotiate substantial discounts which, forinstance, might reduce the unit cost of a three-decker novel from 31s 6d to 15sor 16s (stronger or better-healed publishers could hold out for much more).15

Even so, many copies were not circulated for long enough to make muchof a profit, even at a discount. The big libraries therefore turned themselvesinto second-hand book dealers selling on stock at significantly reduced prices.Some copies would no doubt be bought by private individuals, but most multi-volume works, particularly novels, would be bought by smaller or provinciallibraries for recirculation. Even in the main catalogues of books for loan therewere notices for ‘Twelve volumes of Recent Political Biography Demy 8vonewly bound in cloth’ (at 40s) and ‘Selections of one hundred volumes ofpopular novels, in sound condition for Library use, are offered for fifty shillingsnet cash’.16 No doubt the libraries that bought these job lots would, afterexhausting their smaller and less fashionable market, sell the volumes on tostill smaller libraries or into the second-hand book trade to be sold for a fewpence from a street barrow. In the nineteenth century books, like clothes, wentthrough many owners as they steadily descended the socio-economic ladder.

The circulating library system also had drawbacks for the user. First, as in anyrental system, the reader’s money did not buy the goods, simply a temporaryright to use them. Second, unless the user paid a substantial subscription, usersmight find that they were only able to borrow part of a work at a time; thusnecessitating multiple trips to the library. Third, given the limited number ofcopies of popular works stocked by a library, readers commonly had to devise

15 Blackwood, publisher of George Eliot’s Mill on the Floss, was able to hold out for a price of29s for 3,000 three-decker sets of the novel in 1860; see Griest, Mudie’s Circulating Library,145.

16 See, for instance, Catalogue of the principal Books in circulation at Mudie’s Select Library,January, ! "%! ; the supplement bound in at the end of the British Library copy also offers‘A Parcel of one hundred volumes of novels, Our own selection is offered for THIRTYSHILLINGS net Cash.’

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a list specifying alternative options if the first choice were not available.17

Fourth, and finally, circulating library users were haunted by the fears ofinfectious diseases and the threat of them being spread by contaminated butstill circulating books:

7. No subscriber shall return to the Club any book which has been exposed toinfection from any CONTAGIOUS DISEASE. THE CLUB WILL BEARTHE LOSS. (A doctor’s certificate will be required before any furtherbook is issued.)18

For the middle-class borrower there was one more drawback that had its rootsin the fear of infection, though here the fear was of moral rather than physicalcorruption. The larger libraries, and the smaller that wished in the Englishfashion to ape their betters, viewed themselves as having a moral function anddid not offer books, particularly works of fiction, that might corrupt the reader.Mudie’s desire, in his own words, to run a ‘select’ library ensured that authorssuch as Charles Reade (with Cream), George Meredith (with The ordeal ofRichard Feverel) and George Moore (with A modern lover, A mummer’s wife andEsther Waters) found it difficult or impossible to have some of their workscirculated by Mudie’s or Smith’s.19 In the librarians’ defence, however, onemight say that on occasion the decision may have been as much an economicas a moral one. Libraries needed a large subscriber base, and anything thatmight have made their collections less suitable to females (commonly regardedas the more vulnerable) would have seriously reduced the size of the market.

Why then, given all the drawbacks and limitations for both proprietorsand subscribers, did circulating libraries flourish in the period after 1850? Oneanswer is that they had been part of the British way of books since the earlyeighteenth century, and the book trade was a very conservative one. Funda-mentally, however, the reason was economic. Britain had traditionally been a

17 Many libraries included in either their rules or their advice to users clauses such as:‘2. – In order to avoid disappointment, and to facilitate the exchange of Books, it isnecessary that Subscribers should name at least double the number of Volumes requiredfor each exchange, and the selection should consist entirely of Books actually publishedand in circulation at the Library’ (from A catalogue of the books in the General SubscriptionCirculating Library at Reading, [1887]). In smaller libraries the need to offer a range ofalternatives was that much greater: in Vibert’s circulating library in Penzance, whichhad just 582 titles on offer, the catalogue noted that in order ‘To prevent disappointment,subscribers are requested to send a list of four or five sets from the catalogue.’

18 Catalogue of the Circulating Library of the Children’s Book Club (London: April 1933).19 George Moore’s retaliation in the form of a pamphlet Literature at nurse, or circulating

morals (1885) was one of the most incisive attacks on Mudie’s position, though its resultswere much less than Moore claimed for it. (A facsimile edition of this pamphlet, withan introduction by Pierre Coustillas, was published by the Harvester Press of Hassocks,Sussex, in 1976.)

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high-price culture as far as books were concerned. Although the average priceof books was beginning to fall by the 1850s,20 most new books still representeda significant investment for the average book-buyer. For someone on a goodworking-class income of 30s a week, a 3s 6d book might represent the whole oftheir disposable income for that week. Even higher up the social and incomescale, at the level of many of the users of the larger circulating libraries, bookswere costly. To someone earning £200 a year, a 6s book might represent abouta third to half of the week’s disposable income.21 Despite an industrial revolu-tion that brought cheapening of raw materials and mass production to books,as late as 1895 10% of the books listed in the main trade journals cost morethan 10s. Many of these books were of the sort that were in high demand at thecounters of circulating libraries, in particular the three-decker novel costing aguinea and a half (31s 6d) and in which, it was claimed, Mudie’s specialised.

Mudie’s Select Library

The library that more than any other meant ‘circulating library’ to the Victo-rians and post-Victorians was founded by Charles Edward Mudie (1818–90) in1842 in a stationery, newspaper and bookselling business he ran at 28 UpperKing Street (now Southampton Row), London. Ten years later he moved tolarger premises at 510 New Oxford Street. He expanded on this site and on 17December 1860 opened a major new gallery and library.

With its stuccoed exterior, round hall whose lantern roof was supported onIonic columns that were echoed by pilasters, the 1860 library was neoclassicallygrand. Despite this, we should think of Mudie’s circulating library more as agreat warehouse, rather like an Argos store today. The books were not browsedbut ordered from a catalogue and brought to the borrower waiting at one of anumber of semi-circular counters, each one dedicated to surnames that beganwith a letter within a specified alphabetic range (say ‘L to R’) by a libraryassistant. Behind the scenes the system employed all the latest technology:iron staircases, lifts and communication via speaking tubes. Books are bulky,and Mudie’s needed to despatch and receive huge quantities daily. Borrowerswho could not attend in person, and who could afford a minimum two guineasubscription, could be served by a second part of Mudie’s lending system,the London Book Society, which would receive written orders and dispatch

20 The 1850s marked the first decade in which books priced at 3s. 6d. or under were thepredominant category in the titles listed in the Publishers’ Circular. See S. Eliot, Somepatterns and trends in British publishing ! "$$–!%!% (London, 1994), 61–8.

21 S. Eliot, ‘“Never mind the value, what about the price?” Or, how much did Marmion costSt John Rivers?’, Nineteenth-Century Literature 56 (2001), 164–7.

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them by special vans within a 20 mile radius of Oxford Street.22 Mudie’s thirdsection was the Country department, which dealt with the rest of the UK andthe world beyond. Mudie was early into containerisation, having brass-bound,tin-lined boxes of various sizes (holding from ten to a hundred volumes each)made to transport books in bulk to the provinces, Europe, the Empire andbeyond. Some of these were sent to individuals, but many went to supply localbook clubs and libraries. At Mudie’s height in the later nineteenth century upto 1,000 boxes might be sent out every week.23

Supporting this distribution system were a number of branch offices: 281Regent Street and 2 King Street, Cheapside in London, and in Birminghamand Manchester as well. Beyond these were the many small local circulatinglibraries that took out an institutional subscription to Mudie’s, and displayedthe yellow Mudie’s sticker – which adorned the cover of every loaned book –in their windows. Many of these, no doubt, were bought in bulk from Mudie’scatalogues that announced ‘Selections of one hundred volumes of popular nov-els, in sound condition for Library use, are offered for fifty shillings net cash.’24

Apart from the technology of supply, Mudie’s innovation was fourfold.First, he offered a new and attractively low annual subscription rate of oneguinea.25 Second, in order to make this low rate profitable, he conducted thelibrary on a grand scale. Third, as we have seen, the Library was a ‘select’one, that is, its stock was actively managed morally to ensure an acceptablerange of books to as wide a range of borrowers as possible. Fourth, in order toguarantee the demand, he advertised widely, listing the latest books on offerand suggesting that large numbers of copies were available.26 In this he was notexaggerating. Mudie’s was commonly the best single customer that Victorianpublishers had. In 1855 the library bought 2,500 copies of the third and fourthvolumes of Macaulay’s bestseller the History of England, in 1857 3,250 copies ofLivingstone’s Travels and 1859 1,000 copies of Tennyson’s Idylls.27 Even when notordering on this epic scale, Mudie’s could make the difference between profit

22 In 1857 the scheme went as far as Hampstead in the north, Mile End in the east, NottingHill in the west and Peckham in the south; it was later extended.

23 Griest, Mudie’s Circulating Library, 29.24 See, for instance, the back pages of Catalogue of the principal books in circulation at Mudie’s

Select Library, January, ! "%! .25 By the standards of the time this was a ruthlessly competitive rate. Those libraries that

tried to undercut it, such as the Library Company Limited of Pall Mall in the early 1860swith its 10s 6d rate, quickly failed. See Griest, 23.

26 Mudie’s advertised relentlessly; in The Athenaeum in 1880, for instance, Mudie advertisedin the issues for 10 January, 13 and 27 March, 3 and 10 April, 15 May, 31 July, 28 August, 2and 9 and 16 October, 6 and 13 and 20 November, 25 December.

27 Griest, Mudie’s Circulating Library, 20–1.

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and loss on the publishing of a novel. A first, three-decker edition of an averagenovel might well have a print run of no more than a few hundred sets. An orderfrom Mudie’s for between 100 and 200 sets – not uncommon – could push thenovel into profit even if no further edition were published.28 In the case of apopular novelist such as Walter Besant, the order from Mudie’s alone couldamount to 500 sets, one third of an uncharacteristically large first edition.29

It is noticeable that some of the largest individual orders were for non-fiction works. Mudie’s is so closely associated with the three-decker novel thatwe are in danger of forgetting that the library’s stock was a broad one, witha preponderance of non-fiction. Using a crude but consistent criterion – thenumber of pages that Mudie’s catalogues devoted to non-fiction and fiction –we can trace an interesting trend. In 1857 75% of the pages were devoted tonon-fiction, 25% to fiction. By 1869 the balance had shifted to 65% non-fiction,35% fiction. By 1891 the proportions were 57% and 43%. This represented thehighest point for fiction, for by 1899 non-fiction was at 58% and fiction at 42%.The period when fiction was at its greatest proportion ran from 1884 (42.8%)to 1891 (43.1%). By 1931, although the layout of the catalogue had changed andtherefore direct comparisons are not easy, the balance was closer to Mudie’searlier years: 67% non-fiction, 33% fiction.30 Mudie’s advertisements, certainlyin the later nineteenth century, favoured non-fiction.31

Perhaps the apparent predominance of fiction in the Mudie list was due tothe fact that works of fiction sometimes took the form of three-decker novels,and therefore one title would be represented by three volumes on the library’sshelves. Between January 1858 and October 1859 Mudie claimed to have added391,083 volumes to the library, 165,445 being fiction.32 Here fiction represented42% of the total volumes (as opposed to titles). In the ten years between 1853and 1862 Mudie claimed to have added 960,000 volumes to the Library, nearlyhalf of which were fiction.33 However, despite fiction never being more thanhalf in bulk – and probably about one-third in terms of titles – of Mudie’slending stock, in terms of public perception, then and since, it is fiction in

28 Griest quotes a list of orders from circulating libraries for Mrs Annie Edwards’s Leahin 1875: Smith’s: 25, Day: 13, Cawthorn: 13, Mitchell: 6, Mudie: 125 (Mudie’s CirculatingLibrary, 25).

29 Letter from Andrew Chatto to Walter Besant, 18 October 1883, Chatto & Windus LetterBook 17, fol. 290; Ledger Book 3, fol. 775.

30 A similar balance can be found in larger provincial circulating libraries: in Jolly’s CirculatingLibrary general catalogue (Bath, 1909) non-fiction is listed in single column between pages1 and 563, fiction in double columns between pages 565 and 673.

31 Of the fifteen advertisements in The Athenaeum in 1880, for instance, eleven were exclu-sively of non-fiction.

32 Griest, Mudie’s Circulating Library, 38.33 Griest, Mudie’s Circulating Library, 21.

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general and the three-volume novel in particular that loom largest on Mudie’sshelves.

Scholars have commonly assumed that the three-decker novel was, if notactually created, then certainly encouraged and sustained by Mudie and hisilk as the form that particularly benefited the circulating system based onthe borrowing of one volume at a time. Historically and logically this is asomewhat difficult view to sustain. Mudie can certainly be exonerated fromthe guilt of creating what many came to regard as a monster. The three-deckerhad emerged at the beginning of the nineteenth century as one of the preferredforms for the respectable novel, but it only achieved its fully inflated price of31s 6d (a guinea and a half ) in 1821 on the publication of Scott’s Kenilworth,a full twenty-one years before Mudie established his library. It was Mudie’s,along with its major rival Smith’s, that issued the ultimatum to publishers in1894 which killed off the form. After the First World War Mudie’s contractedand moved premises, but it survived to the mid-1930s: forty years of life afterthe death of the form that was supposed to have sustained it.

If the novel was a compelling one, then clearly the demand for volumes 2and 3 would be strong. If it was not, then the later volumes might languishon the shelves earning the library nothing. A circulating library’s economydepends on the unit cost of the book and the number of days it is out on loan;it does not matter whether the book is the third volume of a three-decker or asingle-volume novel unless the unit price is different. The very best discountMudie’s could negotiate might reduce the per volume cost to just under 50%of the notional price, meaning that each volume of a three-decker would costit about 5s. By 1842 Bentley and others had established 6s as a standard pricefor the first single-volume reprint of novels. Even with a much less generousdiscount, the unit cost for such a reprint would be significantly lower than 5s.If the single-volume book was popular, Mudie’s could buy three copies for lessthan the price of a discounted three-decker; if it was not, there would be onlya single volume, not three, taking up room on his shelves. A single-volumenovel, having much more matter in it than a volume of a three-decker, wouldnot have to be returned so often, thus reducing both the borrower’s and thelender’s costs.

From the 1860s onwards, Mudie’s and all other circulating libraries buyingthe three-decker novel were under growing pressure from the publishers. Ashas been established, it was difficult for a library to make a profit on a volume inless than nine months to a year. By the late 1860s single-volume cheap reprintsof three-deckers were being issued less than a year after their first edition. Bythe 1880s this reprint gap could be as short as three months. Over the same

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period the price of these reprints fell from 6s to 3s 6d and then in some cases to2s.34 This meant that it became more and more difficult to make a profit fromthree-deckers and then sell them on. By 1884 Mudie was admitting to GeorgeBentley that: ‘we find by careful analysis of figures extending over 2 or 3 yearsthat not one in twelve of the 3 vol novels pays its way. We are not alone. Otherlibraries feel the difficulty arising from the over production and over pressureof this class of book.’35

With more and more uncirculating and unsellable novels accumulating inthe basement of Mudie’s building (ominously named ‘the Catacombs’), theLibrary had to find alternative methods of lending texts to its readers. As manynovels were serialised in monthly magazines prior to book publication, it wassometimes possible for a circulating library to wait until the annual volume ofthe magazine was produced and then buy that instead of, or in addition to, thethree-volume version. In October 1883, for instance, Mudie cut his initial orderfor Walter Besant’s All in a garden fair from 500 sets to 300 because he was offeredthe annual volume of Good Words in which the novel had been serialised.36 Butsuch tactics were never going to be enough. On 27 June 1894 Mudie’s andSmith’s issued circulars which, among other things, required publishers tooffer multiple-volume novels at no more than 4s a volume less discounts andinsisted that there be a whole year’s grace before cheaper editions were issued.Although presented as a way of saving the three-decker, it was in practice itsdeath-knell. Despite this, some publishers, notably Chatto and Windus, didmake an attempt to sustain the form over the next two years. In November 1895the firm was still advertising four new novels in three-decker form, althoughnow priced at 15s the set.37 In October 1896 just one three-decker was on offerfrom the same publisher.38 Only one conclusion is possible from this: Chattoand Windus tried to carry on because it was profitable to do so. This impliesthat, one, the profit margins for a publisher were very large when the coverprice was 31s 6d for they were large enough to carry on at 15s; two, a publishermight well be able to make a profit on the most mediocre of novels as long ashe sold a goodly part of the first, and possibly only, print run to the circulatinglibraries. It appears that the inflated price of the three-decker may well havebeen of more advantage to the publishers than to the libraries. If this was so,

34 S. Eliot, ‘The three-decker novel and its first cheap reprint, 1862–94’, The Library 6thseries, 7 (1985), 38–53.

35 Griest, Mudie’s Circulating Library, 168.36 Andrew Chatto to Walter Besant, 18 October 1883, Chatto & Windus Letter Book 17,

fol. 290. Novels by Thomas Hardy and R. D. Blackmore suffered the same fate.37 Publishers’ Circular, 2 November 1895, 497.38 Publishers’ Circular, 3 October 1896, 329.

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Table 11.1. Multi-volume works in relation toMudie’s total stock (%)

>3 vols. 3 vols. 2 vols. 1 vol.1857 0.49 21.71 10 67.81865 0.47 31.63 14.11 53.81869 0.49 34.15 20.1 45.261872 0.13 37.37 18.22 44.281881 0.17 34.95 13.62 51.261884 0.23 38.86 14.65 46.261889 0.1 40.24 12.34 47.321890 0.1 34.45 14.24 51.21891 0.2 34.33 13.34 52.131892 0.22 33.93 11.91 53.911893 0.16 29.72 11.94 58.191894 0 28.94 11.94 59.121899 0.04 22.5 8.55 68.9

it would go a long way to explain why, in the period 1861–4 when Mudie’swas in severe financial difficulties with many large debts owed to the majorpublishing houses, those houses propped Mudie’s up, and why many becamemajor shareholders when in July 1864 the Library was converted into a limitedliability company.39

For a commercial library one of the most accurate accounts of its natureis to be found in its catalogue. We have already seen that fiction was neverthe predominant presence in Mudie’s, despite its reputation. However, whatremains unanswered is how important was the three-decker within Mudie’sfiction stock. Table 11.1 is based on sampling every fifth page of a number of cat-alogues between 1857 and 1899 and converting the numbers into a percentageshare of the whole fiction stock.

What is striking is that before the crisis of 1861 three-volume novels con-stituted just under 22% of the fiction titles. Two-volume novels provided 10%of the share and single-volume fiction accounted for more than two-thirdsof the titles. In the 1860s and 1870s three-deckers accounted for just over athird of the titles; this increased to 39–40% between 1884 and 1889. At thevery point that Mudie was complaining about the Catacombs filling up withthree-volume novels, the three-decker was significantly increasing its share.Nevertheless, even at its height, Mudie’s had more one-volume titles (46–47%)than three-volume titles. It is equally clear that Mudie’s was doing something

39 D. Finkelstein, ‘“The Secret”: British publishers and Mudie’s struggle for economicsurvival 1861–64’, Publishing History 34 (1993), 21–50.

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to correct the problem four years before the 1894 ultimatum. Between 1889and 1894 the three-volume novel share dropped from 40% to 29%. By the endof the century the three-decker novel was back to around one-fifth of fictiontitles, much as it had been in 1857. It is striking that the despised two-volumenovel always had a firm place on Mudie’s shelves, despite what publishers toldwriters about the need to bulk two volumes up to three. Certainly, three vol-umes would take up more shelf-room and sometimes (but not always) Mudie’smight order more copies of sets than of one-volume titles,40 but neverthelessthe single-volume work of fiction, which was supposed to have triumphed inthe circulating libraries only after 1894 was, in fact, a very significant presencein the catalogues from the very beginning.

Mudie’s survived into the mid-1930s partly because it was never as dependenton fiction or on the three-decker novel as historians have suggested, and partlybecause it followed the pattern of most other circulating libraries in diversifyingwithin and beyond the book trade. It had, for instance, very large booksellingand bookbinding departments which issued monthly catalogues to be sent‘Gratis and Post Free to any address’.41 These catalogues consisted of ‘1. RecentPopular Books at Greatly Reduced Prices’, ‘2. Works by Popular Authorsin Sets or Separately’ and ‘3. Books in Ornamental Bindings, for Presents,Prizes, etc.’. Any large circulating library would need a bindery to repair orreplace bindings of loan books and bind up the tens of thousands of cataloguesproduced annually, but Mudie’s made a virtue out of necessity by producingfine and lavish bindings to satisfy the carriage trade and – as the educationalsystem expanded – the growingly important ‘prize book’ market.42

The most significant catalogue was ‘1. Recent Popular Books at GreatlyReduced Prices’. This was where Mudie’s attempted to increase profits orrecoup loses on non- or no-longer-circulating books. The catalogue issuedon 15 May 1878 is typical. It was forty-eight pages long (‘Works of History,

40 Using the data provided by Finkelstein, ‘The Secret’, it is possible to calculate averageorder sizes for one-volume and three-volume titles (not all fiction) from some publishers’order books. On average Mudie’s ordered 181 copies of one-volume titles and 269 sets ofthree-volume titles from Smith and Elder between 1858 and 1865. However, from Bentleybetween 1857 and 1859 he ordered an average of 421 copies of one-volume titles and only325 copies of three-volume sets. Significantly, in both cases Mudie’s orders representeda higher proportion of the average total sales for three-volume titles (Smith and Elder40%, Bentley 60%) than single-volume titles (Smith and Elder 32%, Bentley 56%).

41 Catalogue of the principal books in circulation at Mudie’s Select Library, April 1888, verso ofsecond leaf.

42 In April 1888, for instance, the buyer was offered a set of seventeen volumes of Besantand Rice’s complete novels in a bewildering array of options: Half Roan £46; Half Persian£54 6s. 0d.; Half Morocco £68; Imitation Whole Morocco, marbled edges £76 6s. 0d.;Whole Calf, marbled edges £102; whole Morocco, gilt edges £144.

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Biography, Travel, &c.’ covering pp. 1–31 and ‘Works of Fiction’ pp. 32–47) andoffered books at substantial discounts. Daniel Deronda (1876) could be had infour volumes for 14s, Hardy’s Hand of Ethelberta (1876) in two volumes for 3s 6d,Ainsworth’s Chetwynd Calverley (1876) in three volumes for 3s. Ouida’s Ariadnepublished in June 1877 at 31s 6d was being offered at 5s; R. D. Blackmore’s Eremahad been published at 31s 6d in November 1877 and Mudie’s was discountingit to 6s just six months later. Most extraordinary, Braddon’s An open verdict,which had been published in three volumes in April 1878, was being offeredjust one month later by Mudie’s at 9s. One suspects that some of these werenew, uncirculated copies. Certainly by January 1913 Mudie’s discount list hadforty pages devoted to 6s novels mostly discounted to between 1s 6d and 2sand at least 6% of these were described as being ‘new’. After the formalisationof the Net Book Agreement in 1901 such discounting became much morecontentious, as the Times Book Club was to discover. On the corner of theNew Oxford Street building and running three-quarters of the way down thefour-storey building was advertising text that summarised Mudie’s functions.Above ‘Theatre Ticket Office’ was the legend ‘Books on Loan & for Sale’; both‘loan’ and ‘sale’ were given equally heavy weighting.

Finally even this diversification was not sufficient to protect Mudie’s from aworld changed beyond recognition since 1842. As in the 1860s, attempts weremade to enlist the publishers’ financial support but on this occasion to noavail.43 Mudie’s was finally closed by a court order on 12 July 1937.

W. H. Smith and Sons

Smith’s had an origin very similar to Mudie’s. It was initially a ‘newswalk’(essentially a facility for selling, hiring and distributing newspapers) estab-lished in the early 1790s in Mayfair, which had become a ‘Newspaper agents,Booksellers and Binders’ business by 1818. By 1821 the firm had opened a read-ing room in the Strand in which subscribers (by the month or year) could reada wide range of newspapers and magazines.44 We should not forget the impor-tant role periodicals played in circulating libraries, large and small: Mudie’scertainly had magazines for loan, and not merely because they containedserialised novels; and bound volumes of periodicals featured commonly in itsclearance catalogues.

Between 1848 and 1860 W. H. Smith was establishing bookstalls in most ofthe major, and quite a few of the minor, stations springing up on the rapidly

43 See, for instance, the letter from Fairbairn, Wingfield and Wyckes to Chatto & Windus(Chatto & Windus archives, general correspondence, E–G 1936).

44 C. Wilson, First with the news (London, 1985), 9–17.

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expanding railway network. The bookstalls sold newspapers, books, maps,guides and travel accessories such as rugs and candles. Apart from the pur-chasing and housing of stock, the greatest cost for a large-scale circulatinglibrary was distribution. In the emerging network of manned bookstalls sup-plied by steam trains Smith’s had an ideal supply system for a circulating library.In November 1859 Smith’s offered to act as Mudie’s agents, using the bookstallsas library outlets. Mudie refused (possibly because the fee offered, estimatedat £1,000 per annum, was too low) and, as a consequence, Smith’s proceededto set up their own library in the first half of 1860.45

Smith’s subscription rates were almost identical to those offered by Mudie’s(including the one guinea per annum for one volume) but its dependenceon many small outlets rather than a few large ones made the library ratherdifferent from Mudie’s. The subscriber registered at one of the major bookstallsand could borrow from its stock of books but had to return the volume to thesame stall. This implies that the majority of frequent users were commuterswho naturally passed the same bookstall each working day. By 1861 there wereno fewer than 177 bookstalls from which books could be borrowed.

Even the largest stalls were pressed for space, so most books would beordered from printed catalogues, delivered by train, and be available for col-lection the following day. In the early decades the main library stock wascentralised on Smith’s London offices at 186 Strand, which also dealt withsubscriptions and the disposal of surplus stock.46 By the early 1880s there wereover 12,000 subscribers to the Library.47 By 1908 it was calculated that thecentral depot had over a million volumes in stock, and by 1949 more than500 of Smith’s bookstalls and book shops were functioning as branches of thecirculating library.48

Pressure on space led to Smith’s being less enthusiastic about three-deckernovels. Smith’s did order sets, but not on the scale of Mudie’s. For display,distribution and ease of reading on journeys, the cheap, single-volume novel

45 G. Clear, F. E. K. Foat and G. R. Pocklington, The story of W. H. Smith & Son (London,1949), 16; Wilson, First with the news, 355. In 1848 Smith’s had proposed a circulatinglibrary specifically to serve the customers of the London and North Western Railway(Wilson, First with the news, 358).

46 By 1920 the Library Department had moved to Smith’s new Strand House, PortugalStreet, and by 1949 it was located in Bridge House, Lambeth.

47 For instance, in 1881 there were 12,298; in 1882 12,199.48 L. M. Griffiths, ‘W. H. Smith & Son’s Circulating Library’, unpublished MLS dissertation

(Loughborough University, 1981), 44, 78; Clear, Foat and Pocklington, Story of W. H.Smith & Son, 69. For further information on the library and bookstalls of W. H. Smithsee S. Colclough, ‘“A greater outlay than any return”: The library of WH Smith & Son,1860–1874’, Publishing History 51 (2003), 67–93; S. Colclough, ‘“Purifying the sources ofamusement”? The railway bookstalls of WH Smith & Son, 1855–1860’, Publishing History53 (2004), 5–30.

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was to be preferred. It is not insignificant that it was in the decade following theestablishment of Smith’s Library that publishers began to issue one-volumecheap reprints of three-decker novels soon after the first edition.49 By the mid-1850s publishers such as Routledge and Chapman and Hall were producingsingle-volume novels bound in a glazed, often yellow, board with an illustrationon the front cover and selling at 1s, 2s or 2s 6d. Smith’s themselves, usingChapman and Hall as agents, produced such ‘yellowbacks’ in the late 1850sand early 1860s.50 In other words, Smith’s station bookstalls represented animportant outlet for both bought and borrowed one-volume novels. Longbefore the ultimatum of 1894, Smith’s circulating library was rehearsing therole of a library without the three-decker.

As we have seen in Mudie’s, lending and selling were not opposites, theywere both in the continuum of a successful circulating library’s activity. Smith’stoo had to get rid of non-circulating titles and had done so since the Library’sinception by issuing catalogues of ‘New and second-hand books at greatlyreduced prices’. The importance of this process was made clear in Smith’straining literature: ‘the revenue return from subscriptions is so inadequateto produce a substantial profit that the disposal of the books may justly becoupled with the other issue – obtaining subscriptions for their use’.51 By May1881 you could buy Disraeli’s Endymion (published in December 1880 at 31s 6d)for 7s 6d and Braddon’s Just as I am (October 1880, 31s 6d) for 4s 6d.52 It is clearfrom the accounts of the Library that it was only returning a modest annualprofit in the 1880s because resale of books compensated for the losses made oncirculating them. Significantly, by 1893–4 even this was not enough and Smith’slibrary made a loss in that year.53

After 1894 the Library’s profits increased. However, it was never more thana minor adjunct to Smith’s main activities of newspaper and book selling anddistribution. For instance, between 1 October 1899 and 30 September 1900the firm’s total profits were £189,243 4s 4d; the Library contributed £6,333 0s2d to this, just 3.4% of the total.54 The liberals in the Smith empire liked tothink of the Library as a form of service to the community; those of a more

49 Eliot, ‘The three-decker novel and its first cheap reprint’, 38–53.50 C. W. Topp, Victorian yellowbacks & paperbacks ! ")%–!%$# , vol. 3 (Denver, Colorado, 1997),

xxiii–xxiv.51 A guide for the use of managers of W. H. Smith & Son’s Bookshops (1908, for private circulation)

quoted in Griffiths ‘W. H. Smith & Son’s Circulating Library’, 78.52 W. H. Smith & Son Archive, ccc424, 49–50.53 S. Eliot, ‘Bookselling by the backdoor: circulating libraries, booksellers and book clubs

1870–1966’, in M. Harris and R. Myers (eds.), ‘A genius for letters’: bookselling from thesixteenth to the twentieth century (Winchester, 1995), 159.

54 W. H. Smith & Son Archive, x.121.

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hard-headed disposition probably regarded it, particularly after Smith’s movedinto high-street shops in the first decade of the twentieth century, as a lossleader. However, even a loss leader can lose too much. In the 1950s the Librarymay have been losing up to £50,000 per annum;55 its closure on 27 May 1961,nearly a generation after Mudie’s had folded, marked the beginning of the endfor large commercial circulating libraries.

Boot’s Booklover’s Library

A number of large commercial circulating libraries were founded on the cuspof the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, after the watershed of 1894 and,one might say, as new attempts at solving the problems raised by Mudie’s andSmith’s. When Boot’s Booklover’s Library was founded in 1898 at the instiga-tion of Florence Boot (the wife of Jesse Boot, the founder of the Nottingham-based chain of Boot’s Cash Chemists), there was a narrower and sharper idea ofwhat such libraries should be.56 Unlike its older, mid-Victorian models, Boot’swas overwhelmingly a fiction-based library, much of its original stock beingderived from the surplus lists of those older institutions.57 Its 1905 catalogue,for instance, had some 841 pages; 269 were devoted to non-fiction, thirty tojuvenile works and no fewer than 534 pages to fiction.58 It was highly competi-tive, its annual subscription rate of 10s 6d being half that of its main rivals, andnon-subscribers were welcome to borrow individual books at 1d or 2d a time(with a 2s 6d returnable deposit), a pattern of subscription more common tosmall local libraries than national ones. National, however, it was, with 256branches by 1907, matching Smith’s nation-wide chain of high-street shops.Unlike Smith’s, books could be exchanged ‘at any branch in the kingdom’.Although still there, the moral filter function celebrated by Mudie was slowlybeing relinquished. The catalogue for 1905 reluctantly conceded:

Whilst we do not pretend to dictate to our readers as to either the quality orrange of their reading, we realise fully the duty we owe to the Public and theState in the facilities that, through our large Circulating Library, we afford forthe perusal of all literature, including some books that, personally, we regret

55 Griffiths, ‘W. H. Smith & Son’s Circulating Library’, 111.56 R. E. Theobald, ‘Boot’s Booklover’s Library 1899–1966’, unpublished MA thesis (Lough-

borough University, 1988). A very brief, web-based account of the Boots Library can befound at: http://www.boots-plc.com/information/info.asp?Level3ID=39. For informa-tion on Boots librarians see N. Moody, ‘Fashionable design and good service: the spinsterlibrarians at Boots Booklovers Library’, in E. Kerslake and N. Moody (eds.), GenderingLibrary History (Liverpool, 2000).

57 Griffiths, ‘W. H. Smith & Son’s Circulating Library’, 76.58 Boot’s Booklover’s Library, A catalogue of modern English literature (Nottingham, 1905).

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to see published, but which in common with other Libraries we are boundto supply on demand. If we may not dictate in this matter to our readers, wecan at least take particular pains not to catalogue any books that appear to usunsuitable for general circulation.59

As with more august catalogues, what was listed and what was available wererarely quite the same thing. Perhaps because Boot’s was aimed at a sociallylower market, its early catalogues also performed an educational function.Entries for the ‘best known books’ were augmented by plot summaries derivedmostly from Baker’s Guide to the best fiction. Thus Boot’s could be seen ascontributing to the process of canon definition and stabilisation occurring inthe wake of educational reform in 1870 and later, and the creation of literatureas a university subject.

What was implicit in Smith’s was explicit in Boot’s: the library was a lossleader whose most important function was to draw customers into the shop.For this reason the library was always located at the back of the premisesor on its first floor so that borrowers had to run the gauntlet of consumertemptations both there and back. Even a loss leader, however, needed to becapable of delivering some sort of a return, and Boot’s too issued lists of librarybooks for sale.60 Books with its distinctive label may still be found in second-hand and charity bookshops, and even in private libraries of the aristocracy,nearly forty years after the closure of the libraries in 1966.

The Times Book Club

The last decade of the nineteenth century and the first of the twentieth wit-nessed a transformation in the book production industry, the result of whichwas a huge increase in book and newspaper production, a dramatic fall in bookprices and fierce competition selling textual materials to a market that was fullyliterate by 1913.61 The arrival of cheap mass-circulation daily newspapers, thefirst being the Daily Mail launched in May 1896 by Alfred Harmsworth (laterLord Northcliffe), put pressure on traditional newspapers such as The Times.By 1905 it was devising a system to boost its circulation: anyone paying anannual subscription of £3 18s 0d to The Times automatically became a member

59 Boot’s, A catalogue of modern English literature, 1905.60 These secondhand copies could on occasion threaten the success of cheaper reprint

editions. Writing to his publisher Edward Arnold on the subject of a cheaper editionof one of his novels E. M. Forster observed: ‘Unless one undersells secondhand librarycopies it would not be any good’ (letter dated 29 March 1911, Berg Collection, New YorkPublic Library).

61 S. Eliot, Some patterns and trends in British publishing, ! "$$–!%!% (London, 1994), 13–14.

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of the Times Book Club (TBC) and entitled to borrow three volumes at a time.The library was based at 93 New Bond Street and would deliver and collect thebooks weekly, free within the London postal district; for country subscribersspecial rates were negotiated. The first catalogue, compiled in September 1905,covered 891 pages with its author and title listing alone. As Boot’s had done,the Times Book Club catalogue synopsised many of its entries, using Bakerbut supplementing him with material from the Times Literary Supplement.62

‘The Times’ Book Club . . . is at once a circulating library and a bookshop’asserted the introduction to the first catalogue.63 Each catalogue entry hada ‘published price’ and an ‘our price’ printed next to it; net books had justone price. This approach proved influential. Even as far away as Plymouth,Pophams Circulating Library, which stated that it was ‘In connection with theTimes Book Club’, published an undated catalogue in which every single itemhad a ‘lowest cash price’ attached to it.64

The books for sale were classified by the TBC into four categories:

Class A ‘Absolutely new’: 25% off list books, ‘publishers’ price if net’.Class B ‘Clean and uninjured’, ‘in circulation about a month’: 35% off list

books, 20% off net books.Class C ‘Sound copies of three months’ use’: 50% off list books, 33.33% off

net books.Class D Six months’ use: 70% off list books, 50% off net books.

Class A seemed to suggest that the TBC was trying not to infringe the Net BookAgreement that had come into force in 1900 after ten years of negotiation andexperiment and which forbade selling new books below their published price.The provisions of Class A may well help to explain the common assumptionamong publishers and booksellers in 1905, namely, that the TBC had signed theNet Book Agreement. Class B, however, should have given them pause: thedifference between absolutely new and ‘clean and uninjured’ might be verydifficult to establish and, in any case, offering a 20% discount on net booksa month after publication clearly was a direct challenge to the new allianceformed between the booksellers and the publishers.

The Book War, precipitated by the arrival of the TBC, was messy and longdrawn out and included a general agreement among publishers, reached inOctober 1906, not to supply books to the TBC for circulation, or to The Times or

62 A catalogue of the most important books available for free circulation among subscribers to TheTimes (London, 1905), verso of titlepage.

63 A catalogue of the most important books (1905), 1.64 Catalogue of the principal books in circulation at Popham’s Library (Plymouth, n.d.), v.

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the Times Literary Supplement for review. There was also a civil action betweenThe Times and the publisher John Murray which Murray won with £7,500damages in 1907. The Book War precipitated the very thing that the TBC wasdesigned to prevent, a financial collapse of The Times and intervention by anoutside purchaser. In 1908 Harmsworth took over the sorry mess, signed theNBA and by doing so withdrew the challenge to the book trade that the TBChad represented.

One cannot but think that the TBC was a victim of its own publicity. In orderto create a public stir The Times’ manager, Moberley Bell, and his advertisingmanager, the American Horace Hooper, had to sell hard, and to sell hard theyhad to be up-front. The TBC was doing very little in 1905 that Smith’s andMudie’s were not doing in the 1890s. The major difference was that The Timesdid it loudly and the older circulating libraries did it quietly.

Despite the set-back, the TBC survived and continued to innovate. In 1911the library became available to the general public and in 1914 the borrowerswere given direct access to the shelves, an innovation rare even among publiclibraries until after the First World War. By the time the library moved intonew premises in Wigmore Street in 1922 it was a profitable concern.65

Conclusion

Mudie’s went into liquidation in 1937; W. H. Smith’s Library closed its doorsin 1961, and the Times Book Club in 1962; Boot’s Booklover’s Library followedsuit in February 1966. The repercussions spread out through the subtle networkof dependency to the smaller and local libraries. Bath, which had had fifteencirculating libraries in 1852, saw its last, owned by Ulrico Maurice, close in1966. The factors that caused these failures were many. As we have seen, manylarger libraries had functioned, covertly or openly, as discount sellers of new ornearly new books. The 1930s saw the first of the modern book clubs foundedin the UK and Penguin began issuing its first sixpenny paperbacks in 1935. In1966 Smith’s in association with Doubleday & Co. set up Book Club Associateswhich now dominates the UK book club market. All these events effectivelyundermined the system by which the circulating libraries could turn a potentialloss into a modest profit by reselling cheaper books. Smaller and working-classlibraries, particularly in the midlands and the north, survived for longer, butthe spread of television in the 1960s, particularly commercial television withits diet of westerns and soap operas, provided an easier source of escapism.

65 I. Norrie, Mumby’s publishing and bookselling in the twentieth century (London, 1982), 74.

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Public libraries, theoretically a threat to commercial libraries from the laternineteenth century onwards, expanded rapidly after the First World War andcommonly became open access. In the 1960s and 1970s, with less concern topromote education over entertainment, public libraries began stocking in largequantities the sorts of fiction once only available in the twopenny libraries.In essence, in the later twentieth century the various markets once served soextensively by the circulating libraries found freer, cheaper and easier sourcesof supply, and economic natural selection did the rest.

However, a faint echo of those circulating libraries that charged by thevolume and did not exact a subscription can be found in the early twenty-firstcentury: the video – and now DVD – rental shops that are offering cheap,use-once access to the electronic equivalent of the three-decker novel.

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