Lunchtime Lecture: The Politics of Reading and the Bristol Library Society

Join us for this Lunchtime Lecture with Joshua Smith, PhD researcher at the University of Stirling.

‘Books of massy knowledge’: The Politics of Reading and the Bristol Library Society, 1789-1832.

Accompanying the exhibition currently on show at Bristol Central Library, this talk will examine the predecessor to Bristol’s public library, the Bristol Library Society. Founded in 1772, by 1800 this private members’ library was an established cultural and bibliographical presence within Bristol’s literary environment.

Using the records and books stored at Bristol Central Library, this talk looks at the men and women who made up the library’s readers in the early nineteenth century. Many of the city’s religious, economic, and social elites were library members, and the Library Society enjoyed a close and profitable relationship with Bristol’s Corporation. Nevertheless, this was also a period in which the library underwent a series of internal crises, as members debated and grappled over its administration.

This talk examines these debates and what a study of Bristol’s readers can tell us about the city’s people and politics in a period that saw elections, riots, and reform.

Host or Publisher Bristol Libraries