I write this in a garret a few doors down from the public library in Muswell Hill, north London. It is a nice irony that a century and a half ago, on the site where the free-to-join municipal library now stands, was a villa owned by one Charles Edward Mudie. In the mid-19th century, Mudie had amassed a fortune by establishing a hugely successful lending library where subscribers could either pay a guinea a year to borrow as many books as they could read, or take the pay-as-you-go option of a shilling a book.
For purely commercial reasons, Mudie was a staunch supporter of novels that were long enough (c.200,000 words) that they needed to be broken up into three separate volumes, and his influence was such that publishers would insist that writers bulk out their narratives accordingly. As the authors of The Library put it: ‘If we ever wonder why so many 19th-century novels lose themselves in the middle passage with a convoluted love story between two marginal characters, we should blame Charles Edward Mudie.’
I cite the example of Mudie and the Victorian novel because it illustrates the key point that runs through this excellent history: that libraries are much more than passive repositories of knowledge. Rather, they have shaped both how we read and what we read, not to mention who gets to read. Another example: there is a well-known photograph, reproduced above, of the bombed-out library of Holland House in Kensington, hit during the Blitz, with readers in hats and macs still casually browsing the shelves. The image was circulated as propaganda: the stoicism of the home front, the persistence of culture. The library, and our relationship to it, can inspire national pride.
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