Circulating Libraries

June 30

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?

Maryland Gazette (June 30, 1774).

“Just published … the following new comedies.”

In the spring and summer of 1774, William Aikman, “bookseller and stationer in Annapolis,” advertised a “LARGE collection of books” in the Maryland Gazette.  He listed all sorts of titles, including “Blackstone’s commentaries on the laws of England” in four volumes, “Buchan’s domestic medicine, best London edition,” and “Russou’s works, … translated from the French.”  In addition, he stocked a variety of books from several genres, ranging from a “compleat assortment of the British poets” to “Latin, Greek, and French school-books” to “small histories for children.”  Aikman had something for every reader.

The bookseller also devoted a portion of his advertisement to three “new comedies” that sold for one shilling and six pence each.  These works, “Just published,” most likely were reprints that he acquired from John Dunlap in Philadelphia.  In 1774, Dunlap printed American editions of Robert Hitchcock’s The Macaroni: A Comedy, as It Is Performed at the Theatre Royal, George Coleman’s The Man of Business: A Comedy: As It is Acted at the Theatre-Royal in Covent-Garden, and Hugh Kelly’s The School for Wives: A Comedy: As It Is Performed at the Theatre-Royal in Drury Lane.  Perusing those works gave readers in the colonies, in Philadelphia or Annapolis or anywhere else that Dunlap distributed his reprinted editions, a taste of the theater scene in the cosmopolitan center of the empire.

In addition, Aikman announced that a “large assortment of all the late publications are expected from London by the first ship, for the use of the Annapolis circulating library.”  That was another venture that the enterprising bookseller and stationer oversaw.  A year earlier, he opened that library and advertised the subscription fees for joining for a month, a quarter, six months, or a year.  In the fall of 1773, he advertised that his Annapolis Circulating Library provided delivery service to Baltimore, both a convenience for members there and an attempt to undercut a competing library proposed by a competitor who did not manage to establish a library there.

Overall, Aikman’s advertisement revealed multiple trajectories for producing, distributing, and acquiring books on the eve of the American Revolution.  Booksellers received most of their inventory from English printers, though printers in the colonies published both American editions and original works.  Those printers worked with printers and booksellers in other towns to exchange, market, and sell books and pamphlets printed in the colonies.  For their part, readers could purchase books or join circulating libraries to increase their access to larger libraries than they could afford on their own.

November 13

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?

Maryland Journal (November 13, 1773).

“Mr. RATHELL thankfully acknowledges the receipt of a Letter signed ‘a Friend to Literary Institutions.’”

Joseph Rathell’s “PROPOSALS FOR ESTABLISHING A CIRCULATING LIBRARY IN BALTIMORE-TOWN” appeared once again in the November 13, 1773, edition of the Maryland Journal.  So did William Aikman’s address “To the LADIES and GENTLEMEN of the Town of BALTIMORE” concerning his efforts to establish a circulating library in Annapolis and deliver books to subscribers in Baltimore.  Aikman reported that he heard from prospective subscribers that they had concerns about “the trouble and risk they run of procuring and returning the books.”  To assuage such anxieties, he devised a plan for subscribers in Baltimore to submit orders and return books to a local merchant who would then forward them to Annapolis via a weekly packet ship.  Aikman planned to charge a dollar for delivery service in addition to the subscription fees.  Rathell mocked the additional fee in an advertisement that ran in the same issue of the Maryland Journal as Aikman’s notice.  He seemingly knew about Aikman’s advertisement before it appeared in print, perhaps tipped off by a friend in the printing office.

Whether or not that was the case, Rathell did receive other assistance from the Maryland Journal in marketing his circulating library.  The local news items included a blurb about his efforts and the response from residents of the city so far.  The blurb ran immediately below “SHIP NEWS” and before “PRICES CURRENT at BALTIMORE,” a prime spot for merchants and other readers to notice it.  It related that Rathell “thankfully acknowledges the receipt of a Letter signed ‘a Friend to Literary Institutions,’ enclosing the Names of sundry Ladies and Gentlemen, as Subscribers to his intended CIRCULATING LIBRARY.”  Readers may have doubted the veracity of this report, dismissing it as mere puffery.  Those who continued reading encountered commentary from Rathell that might have more appropriately appeared among the advertisements.  For instance, he pledged that “he will be particularly exact in selecting the Books, in which he will be principally governed by Gentlemen of known literary Skill, in Philadelphia, and New-York.”  In so doing, he directed attention away from Aikman’s library in Annapolis in favor of larger and more cosmopolitan port cities.  He also directly solicited requests from prospective subscribers to his library, proclaiming that “any Commands addressed to Mr. Rathell, directing his Attention to particular, scarce, or curious Publications, &c. shall meet due Regard.”  This advertisement masqueraded as a news item, supplementing the proposals that Rathell published elsewhere in the newspaper.  He could have incorporated all of the information into a single notice, but a news item doubled as an endorsement of his enterprise.  In the end, it did not matter.  Rathell did not manage to launch a circulating library in Baltimore.  Aikman had more success with his endeavor in Annapolis, at least prior to the Revolutionary War.

November 6

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago this week?

Maryland Journal (November 6, 1773).

“PROPOSALS FOR ESTABLISHING A CIRCULATING LIBRARY IN BALTIMORE-TOWN.”

When he opened a circulating library in Annapolis in 1773, bookseller and stationer William Aikman faced competition in his efforts to recruit subscribers in Baltimore.  Joseph Rathell announced his own intention for “ESTABLISHING A CIRCULATING LIBRARY IN BALTIMORE-TOWN” in the October 23 edition of the Maryland Journal.  A week later, he published a longer advertisement, one that offered the same amenities, lower fees, and greater convenience for patrons than Aikman outlined in his notices.

In his updated address to prospective subscribers, Rathell emphasized the fees for “this much wish’d for Institution,” just “one Dollar a Quarter … (tho’ the Subscription to the Annapolis Library is One Guinea per Annum, besides the Expence of a Dollar a Year for Carriage of Books from thence to this Place by Water).”  He expected readers to recognize the bargain for the quarterly fee, while simultaneously mocking Aikman’s most recent advertisement.  Aikman apparently learned of Rathell’s “PROPOSALS” and, wary of the threat to his own efforts to expand his clientele beyond Annapolis, devised a plan to address the concerns that prospective subscribers had expressed about the “trouble and risk they run of procuring and returning the books.”  In an advertisement in the October 30 edition of the Maryland Journal, the first issue after Rathell’s original advertisement, Aikman presented what he considered a reasonable solution, “any orders for books left with Mr. Christopher Johnston, merchant, in Baltimore, will be regularly forwarded by a packet that goes weekly between Baltimore and Annapolis.”  Subscribers could request and return books for just a dollar a year, an additional fee that Rathell derided.  Somehow, the bookseller in Baltimore became aware of Aikman’s proposal before it appeared in print in the Maryland Journal.  In the same issue that Aikman first introduced delivery service Rathell published a rejoinder on another page.  The advertisements ran next to each other in the November 6 edition, drawing even more attention to the bargain that Rathell offered.  How did he know about Aikman’s newest proposal before reading the advertisement in the newspaper?  The annual subscription fee previously appeared in notices in the Maryland Gazette, advertisements that Rathell could have seen, but the delivery service was a new aspect of Aikman’s library.  Did someone in the printing office pass along that information?

Rathell sought to cater to “the Convenience of Gentlemen and Ladies of Literary Taste and Discernment” in Baltimore and surrounding towns, but he was not quite ready to launch his own circulating library.  His advertisement undercutting Aikman also served as an invitation to prospective subscribers to submit their names within three weeks of his advertisement’s first appearance in the Maryland Journal.  At that time, “if an adequate Number of Subscribers appear, the Library will be completed and opened without Delay.”  Rathell encouraged subscribers “to be speedy in entering their Names … that he may be the sooner enable to provide a COLLECTION OF BOOKS … very considerable in Number.”  He likely also intended that such haste would prompt prospective subscribers to choose between his library and Aikman’s library in Annapolis, boosting the prospects for his own by drawing subscribers away from a rival.  This ploy did not work, in part because prospective subscribers considered Aikman’s proposal the more viable option.  Rathell did not open a circulating library in Baltimore, despite the savvy appeals he made.  Other factors defeated his plan.  As Joseph Towne Wheeler explains, “the growing commercial town was still dependent upon the older community.”[1]  After all, the Maryland Journal, Baltimore’s first newspaper, commenced publication just a couple of months earlier.  “After the Revolution the situation was reversed,” Wheeler continues, noting that “when Parson Weems visited Annapolis in 1800, he could write, ‘There is not a book store in the whole town.’”[2]  Baltimore was not quite ready for the circulating library that Rathell envisioned.

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[1] Joseph Towne Wheeler, “Booksellers and Circulating Libraries in Colonial Maryland,” Maryland Historical Magazine 34, no. 2 (June 1939): 118.

[2] Wheeler, “Booksellers and Circulating Libraries,” 119.

October 30

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , ,

What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?

Maryland Journal (October 30, 1773).

“Any orders for books … will be regularly forwarded by a packet that goes weekly between Baltimore and Annapolis.”

When William Aikman opened a circulating library in Annapolis in the summer of 1773, he hoped to gain subscribers in Baltimore and other towns.  Unlike modern public libraries open to all patrons, eighteenth-century circulating libraries lent books and other reading material only to subscribers who paid fees to access them.  To make the venture viable, Aikman needed to recruit as many subscribers as possible.  According to the advertisement he placed in the October 30 edition of the Maryland Journal, the newspaper only recently established in Baltimore, Aikman stated that he had learned that a “number of the friends of literature” in that city expressed interest in subscribing to his library yet refrained solely due to the “trouble and risk they run of procuring and returning the books” at such a distance.  His library catalog revealed which books subscribers could borrow, but the logistics of checking them out and returning them to the library remained an obstacle.

Aikman proposed a solution to that problem.  He instructed that “any orders for books left with Mr. Christopher Johnston,” a merchant in Baltimore, “will be regularly forwarded by a packet that goes weekly between Baltimore and Annapolis.”  Aikman charged an additional fee for this service, a dollar a year.  He also advised that it would go into effect “provided a proper number of subscribers can be got.”  In other words, prospective subscribers needed to consider not only the benefits that would accrue to them but also their duty to make the library more accessible to the “friends of literature” in their town.  Aikman promised “above two hundred volumes of all the new publications of merit” that subscribers could borrow rather than buy.

The bookseller and stationer in Annapolis may not have been aware that he faced a competitor.  Elsewhere in the October 30 edition of the Maryland Journal, Joseph Rathell published “PROPOSALS FOR ESTABLISHING A CIRCULATING LIBRARY IN BALTIMORE-TOWN,” offering residents a local alternative to the library in Annapolis.  The Adverts 250 Project will examine that advertisement, including Rathell’s dismissive reference to Aikman’s fees for delivering books to Baltimore, in another entry.

July 11

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago this week?

Maryland Gazette (July 8, 1773).

“The library will be of real utility to the publick.”

In the summer of 1773, William Aikman, a bookseller and stationer, opened a circulating library in Annapolis.   Like other libraries founded in eighteenth-century America, Aikman’s new venture was a subscription library that required users to pay fees to borrow books.  The bookseller accumulated and lent “12 hundred volumes on the most useful sciences, history, poetry, agriculture, voyages, travels, miscellanies, plays, with all the most approved of novels, magazines and other books of entertainment,” but library patrons had to pay for borrowing privileges.

Aikman provided an overview of those fees, a sliding scale that gave greater bargains to patrons who subscribed for longer periods. The nominal difference in the fees for six months compared to a year seemed designed for Aikman to attract yearly subscribers that he could then promote to prospective subscribers.  Just as newspaper printers boasted about their extensive circulation in their efforts to entice new subscribers and, especially, advertisers, the bookseller likely realized that some colonizers would subscribe to his library for an entire year when they learned how many others had already done so.  The perceived popularity of this service had the potential to spawn even more demand.  Aikman’s pricing structure encouraged patrons to subscribe for longer periods, enhancing the appearance of the popularity of the new venture.

  • 5 shillings per month
  • 12 shillings per quarter
    • saving 3 shillings or 20% compared to the monthly rate
  • 20 shillings for six months
    • saving 4 shillings or 17% compared to the quarterly rate
    • saving 10 shillings or 33% compared to the monthly rate
  • 1 guinea (or 21 shillings) per year
    • saving 19 shillings or 48% compared to the semiannual rate
    • saving 27 shillings or 56% compared to the quarterly rate
    • saving 39 shillings or 65% compared to the monthly rate

The bookseller also offered a nightly rate, three pence, for patrons who desired access to the library but did not wish to pay for an entire month or longer.  Depending on the patron’s perspective, the nightly rate was either a bargain or exorbitant.  It granted entry to those who might not have been able to commit to the monthly, quarterly, semiannual, or annual rates, but at a much higher cost per night.

Whether patrons opted to check out books by the night or purchase subscriptions to borrow two books at a time for a year, Aikman considered his new circulating library an important service “of real utility to the publick.”  He requested “encouragement from the friends of literature” to make it a successful venture that met the needs of the community as well as generating revenues for the proprietor.

March 14

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update, Guest Contribution , , , , , , ,

GUEST CURATOR: Daniel McDermott

What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today”

Mar 14 - 3:14:1767 Providence Gazette
Providence Gazette (March 14, 1767).

“THE Proprietors of the Providence Library are hereby notified to meet at the Court-House.”

David Rowland, “Librarian, pro Tempore,” placed this advertisement to notify “Proprietors” of the Providence Library Company (founded 1753) that a meeting was planned to elect a new Librarian on March 28. The advertisement also notified anyone who had books belonging to the library to return them.

The greatest change in libraries over time has been to access by general readers. Today, most town libraries are open to the public but require a library card to access their collection. These are the libraries used by most person. In eighteenth-century America, access to libraries was more restricted because most were based on a monthly or yearly paid membership.

According to William Burns, the two most popular types of libraries in the eighteenth century were circulating libraries and subscription libraries. Circulating libraries had lower subscription fees, paid weekly to borrow books. Subscription libraries normally had higher membership rates and were associated with reading societies.

The Junto, Benjamin Franklin’s discussion group in Philadelphia, created one of the most famous subscription libraries. It still exists today as the Library Company of Philadelphia. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the library was one of the five largest in the United States. The Library Company of Philadelphia is a good example of how libraries are valued in our society: some last multiple centuries. Over time, other libraries that give open access to the public have joined them. Although Americans did not expect to find libraries open to all in the eighteenth century, many valued libraries and the access to knowledge and entertainment they provided.

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ADDITIONAL COMMENTARY: Carl Robert Keyes

Printers and booksellers frequently advertised their wares in eighteenth-century newspapers, sometimes listing dozens of titles, sometimes promoting a particular book, and sometimes seeking subscribers as a means of gauging interest in books they intended to publish (provided the public responded with sufficient demand in advance). A reading revolution took place in the eighteenth century as consumers purchased greater numbers of books and their reading habits shifted from intensive reading of bibles, devotional texts, and almanacs to extensive reading from an array of genres.

The reading revolution also included the founding of private lending libraries by civic organizations, including the Library Company of Philadelphia (1731), the Charleston Library Society (1748), and the Providence Library Company (1753). Daniel has already provided a brief sketch of two models for operating libraries – subscription libraries and circulating libraries – that gave colonists greater access to books than most would have been able to purchase on their own.

As Daniel notes, subscription libraries and circulating libraries charged different rates to access their collections. In exchange for paying the fees, readers received different benefits. Members of subscription libraries paid annual fees for unlimited borrowing privileges, giving them broad access to the library company’s collections. Nonsubscribers could also borrow books, paying variable fees based on the size of the book (the dimensions of the pages – folio, octavo, duodecimo – not the length of the text) and the length of time they kept the book. On the other hand, circulating libraries did not usually have annual subscription fees. Instead, they charged by the week, which allowed patrons to keep expenses down by choosing how often to check out books. Circulating libraries also limited access to one book at a time.

Circulating libraries facilitated the reading revolution. A significant aspect of the shift from intensive to extensive reading involved the rise of the novel and reading for pleasure, especially by women. Subscription libraries tended not to obtain novels, but, as William Burns notes, novels “were the lifeblood of the circulating library.” Furthermore, “women comprised about half the membership of the circulating libraries,” but subscription libraries did not admit female readers (though that did not prevent men from checking out books for female relatives and friends).

Despite differences in membership, collections, and operating structure, both subscription libraries and circulating libraries emerged exclusively in cities in the eighteenth century, pointing to another important distinction between libraries then and now. Daniel notes that public libraries operated by local municipalities have greatly expanded access to information and services. Organizations like the Providence Library Company played an important role in that process as they allowed early Americans greater access to books than they previously experienced.