Before the Public Library explores the emergence of community-based lending libraries in the Atlantic World in the two centuries before the advent of the Public Library movement in the mid-nineteenth century through essays by eighteen leading scholars.

Acknowledgements List of Illustrations Notes on Contributors Introduction  Mark Towsey and Kyle B. Roberts Part 1: Empire and Enlightenment 1 Building Religious Communities with Books: The Quaker and Anglican Transatlantic Libraries, 1650–1710  Louisiane Ferlier 2 Poetry and Civic Urbanism in the Coffee-House Library in the Mid-eighteenth Century  Markman Ellis 3 Of Mudfish, Harpsichords and Books: Libraries and Community in Eighteenth-Century Jamaica  April G. Shelford 4 Affleck Generations: The Libraries of the Boswells of Auchinleck, 1695–1825  James J. Caudle 5 Sedition, Revolution and Libertinism in Eighteenth-Century Brazil: The Library of Naturalist José Vieira Couto  Júnia Ferreira Furtado Part 2: Revolution and Nation Building 6 Uncommon Knowledge: Late Eighteenth-Century American Subscription Library Collections  Cheryl Knott 7 Reading Sheffield: Sheffield Libraries and Book Clubs, 1771–1850  Sue Roe and Loveday Herridge 8 Challenging Institutional Ambitions: The Practice of Book Exchanges at the New York Society Library, 1789–1795  Rob Koehler 9 A “Quaint Corner” of the Reading Nation: Romantic Readerships in Rural Perthshire, 1780–1830  Katie Halsey Part 3: Institutionalisation and Expansion 10 From Private Devotion to “Public” Education: Northern Dissenting Academy Libraries and Their Benefactors  Rachel Eckersley 11 The Foundation of Plymouth Public Library: Cultural Status, Philanthropy and Expanding Readerships, 1810–1825  Annika Bautz 12 Reading on the Edge of the Atlantic: The Easton Library Company  Christopher Phillips 13 Crafting Respectability: The Politics of Class at the Mechanic Apprentices’ Library of Boston  Lynda K. Yankaskas Part 4: Public Libraries 14 Reading Publics: Books, Communities and Readers in the Early History of American Public Libraries  Tom Glynn 15 From Voluntary to State Action: Samuel Smiles, James Silk Buckingham and the Rise of the Public Library Movement in Britain  Alistair Black Bibliography of Secondary Works Index