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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 age and after simon eliot

Introduction Circulating and subscription libraries overlapped and frequently shared many characteristics, so the distinction between them is often rather arbitrary. Indeed, occasionally circulating libraries referred to themselves as ‘subscription’ libraries, and vice versa. Nevertheless, most subscription libraries had a different origin from circulating libraries. Many evolved out of small, private book clubs during the eighteenth century and shared many of their characteristics. They tended to have rather high annual subscriptions, they sometimes required 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 the growing production and consumption of ﬁction – particularly in the form of the novel – such libraries were never going to satisfy what many would have regarded as a vulgar demand. This was left to commerce, and commerce was what circulating libraries were all about. The circulating library was certainly a success in its time: the Library History Database to  currently lists 5,481 circulating 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 to their market. One might subscribe on a yearly, quarterly or monthly basis. Some libraries allowed shorter subscription periods offering a weekly or even a daily rate; these shorter subscriptions could be frequently found in small circulating libraries serving poorer areas or in libraries with a distinctly seasonal trade(suchasspatownsandseasideresorts).Somecirculatinglibrariescharged by the volume borrowed (with or without a security deposit). Most circulating 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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fictionandnon-fiction;additionallytheycommonlyhadsomereferenceworks, newspapers and magazines on offer. But the generality and the commercialism of circulating libraries often went further. It has been remarked that specialised book shops were rare in the past, most selling many more things than books. Similarly, circulating libraries were a focus for other forms of commercial activity, often but not always print related. Sometimes the library was the main focus of activity, with other sales being added to it; in many other cases the circulating library was simply an appendage to other, and probably more profitable, activities. Suppliers of stationery, printed forms, books, newspapers and magazines could also advertise a circulating library on the premises but in practice this might be no more than a few shelves of miscellaneous titles. This was even more likely to be the case if the shop sold items more remote from those of the book trade: groceries, patent medicines, musical instruments or fancy goods. Even the largest circulating libraries offered other services. Lovejoy’s library in Reading was, by 1887, performing many roles: insurance agent, publisher 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 service.2 Advertisements for businesses for sale in the book trade journals of the later nineteenth century frequently mentioned a circulating library as part of the business, though often it was placed rather far down in the list of attractions. One of the reasons for this diversity – and it is something of a paradox for libraries of a commonly commercial character – was that it seems to have been difficult over most of our period for circulating libraries to generate sufficient profits to be stand-alone enterprises. Partly this was due to the problem confronting any commercial library that was trying to satisfy two rather different sorts of customer: those who were essentially wanting to read the latest fashionable and popular books (commonly novels), and those who wanted to read canonical works of fiction and/or non-fiction. Holding the balance 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 and Charles Dickens through its doors. A feature of the library was its collection of ‘rare and valuable Editions of Mr Ruskin’s Works’ which, by 1887, had been turned into a reference collection.

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Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008 Downloaded from Cambridge Histories Online by IP 128.103.149.52 on Sat Mar 02 18:29:03 WET 2013. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521780971.013 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2013 Circulating libraries a large enough range of multiple copies of currently in-demand titles was a tricky business. However, it needed to be done efficiently and continuously if the library were to satisfy a diverse range of readers and make them think it worthwhile to renew their subscriptions. Most circulating libraries were not as well founded or as large as those described below, and this fact of scale is important. Most users of small circulating libraries would have experienced both a quantitative and a qualitative difference. Obviously there would be fewer books to borrow, fewer copies of popular works and a longer delay in getting the most recent books (indeed, many would have had to wait until surplus copies from larger libraries began to filter down or cheap reprints were produced). But a recent analysis has suggested that smaller libraries tended to stock conservatively: in such libraries the percentage of canonical works went up and the proportion of less-well-known titles went down. In libraries with between 2,000 and 3,000 titles 40–60% might be canonical. In libraries with fewer than 500 titles that percentage might be as 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 circulating libraries such as Lewis’s Library at 186 Gower Street devoted to scientific and technical books.4 There was the Universal Circulating Musical Library at 86 Newgate Street, established early in 1853 and run first by C. J. Graue then by Gustav Scheurmann & Co., and Novello’s Music Library at 1 Berners Street, both lending printed music.5 In the 1930s there was the Circulating Library of the Children’s Book Club at 17 Connaught Street.6 There were also libraries that offered exclusively foreign texts such as Rolandi’s at 20 Berners Street that in 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 ‘including the Supplements of 1855 & 1856’ was published by Scheurmann, and claimed that the library contained ‘upwards of 50,000 distinct works’. 6 Catalogue of the Circulating Library of the Children’s Book Club (London, April 1933). The library was opened in December 1931. 7 Libri italiani & spagnoli: Catalogue of Italian and Spanish Books with a few in Portuguese, lent to read by P.Rolandi, at his French, Italian, German, and Spanish Circulating Library (London, 1849).

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Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008 Downloaded from Cambridge Histories Online by IP 128.103.149.52 on Sat Mar 02 18:29:03 WET 2013. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521780971.013 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2013 libraries of our own an advantageous position. For instance, in Scarborough in 1868 there were at least nine libraries of a commercial character, five of which were located in booksellers’ and stationers’ shops, for a population of around 18,000 people.8 In Bath in 1852 there were thirteen circulating libraries and two specialising in music; despite the growth of public libraries there were still eleven in 1902 and four as late as 1952.9 Circulating libraries abroad stocking English books and catering to a transient population by offering subscriptions on a weekly, fort- nightly or monthly basis, such as B. Maurer’s circulating library in ‘Trinkhalle 1’ at Bad Schwalbach, would also be in an advantageous position.10 Small circulating libraries remote from other forms of textual competition might also flourish. In 1865 the Bala Circulating Library had around 448 titles (some 330 in English, 118 in Welsh) which were overwhelmingly non-fictional with strong religious content; subscription was just two shillings a year but the library was only open 8.00–9.00 pm on a Monday.11 In the mid-twentieth century,at a time when most large circulating libraries were closing, small circulating libraries survived, commonly in working-class areas and often called ‘twopenny libraries’ from the cost of hiring a book, offering westerns and formula romances of the Mills and Boon type (a similar phenomenon could be found in Australia in the 1930s and 1940s).12 Such specialist institutions had a number of economic advantages over more general and larger circulating libraries. First, they served a well-defined and homogeneous market whose needs and wants might be easier to anticipate. Second, being specialist they bought from a smaller range of publishers and thus 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, so borrowing 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 publications were not likely to be subject to rapid cheap reprinting that might incline the 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 on Tauchnitz editions. Peter Hoare has also drawn my attention to the Gabinetto Vieusseux in Florence, ‘much used by expatriates in the season in the nineteenth century’, and to a 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 French circulating 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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Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008 Downloaded from Cambridge Histories Online by IP 128.103.149.52 on Sat Mar 02 18:29:03 WET 2013. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521780971.013 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2013 Circulating libraries local libraries, there was often an additional advantage: they offered a flexible payment 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 library with a reliable, long-term income. Take the one guinea a year charge by Mudie’s which entitled a subscriber to borrow one volume at a time. This annual subscription rate represented an income to the library of 0.69 of an old penny (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 the library 0.69d a day. Higher subscriptions that allowed the borrowing of more than one volume at a time represented better value for the subscriber but less income per volume borrowed for the library. Books varied substantially in price but, for sake of argument, let us take a book that cost the library 5sor60d. Given the trade practice of offering thirteen copies for the price of twelve, this unit price might be reduced to 55.25d. Ignoring all other costs, the library in question would therefore have to lend that volume for a minimum of eighty subscriber-days (or eleven weeks three 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 of borrowers. Any library worth its salt has to have a large quantity of its stock available on the shelves for borrowing. This means that a high proportion of books bought by a library was, at any given time, not earning its keep by being loaned out. This put more pressure on the volumes that were borrowed and extended the time before they began to make a profit. Of course, there would be subscribers who did not borrow all the time, and for the times they were non-borrowers they represented income with very little cost to the library. The calculations above ignore a number of factors, the most important of which would have been running costs (including rent, interest payments, heating, lighting, etc.) and labour. Work in a closed-shelf library is labour intensive. At the height of his activities Mudie, for instance, was employing some 250 people in his library,very few of whom were casual labour.14 Labour costs in the nineteenth century were much lower than now, but nevertheless such 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 penny per 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 volume for four days. 14 G. L. Griest, Mudie’s Circulating Library & the Victorian novel (Bloomington, IN, 1970), 31.

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Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008 Downloaded from Cambridge Histories Online by IP 128.103.149.52 on Sat Mar 02 18:29:03 WET 2013. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521780971.013 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2013 libraries of our own resources of any middling-to-large circulating library.Given all these additional costs, it is unlikely that a volume could make much profit unless it circulated for 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, either by buying titles at a substantial discount from publishers or, in the case of a smaller or more remote library, buying second-hand copies from larger, metropolitan libraries. For this reason, although we shall mostly be looking at the larger libraries, we need to think of the post-1850 circulating libraries not as individual units but as part of an interdependent system. The large libraries such as Mudie’s and Smith’s could negotiate substantial discounts which, for instance, might reduce the unit cost of a three-decker novel from 31s 6dto15s or 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 much of a profit, even at a discount. The big libraries therefore turned themselves into 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 provincial libraries for recirculation. Even in the main catalogues of books for loan there were notices for ‘Twelve volumes of Recent Political Biography Demy 8vo newly bound in cloth’ (at 40s) and ‘Selections of one hundred volumes of popular novels, in sound condition for Library use, are offered for fifty shillings net cash’.16 No doubt the libraries that bought these job lots would, after exhausting their smaller and less fashionable market, sell the volumes on to still smaller libraries or into the second-hand book trade to be sold for a few pence from a street barrow.In the nineteenth century books, like clothes, went through many owners as they steadily descended the socio-economic ladder. Thecirculatinglibrarysystemalsohaddrawbacksfortheuser.First,asinany rental system, the reader’s money did not buy the goods, simply a temporary right to use them. Second, unless the user paid a substantial subscription, users might find that they were only able to borrow part of a work at a time; thus necessitating multiple trips to the library. Third, given the limited number of copies 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 of 29sfor3,000 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 THIRTY SHILLINGS net Cash.’

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Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008 Downloaded from Cambridge Histories Online by IP 128.103.149.52 on Sat Mar 02 18:29:03 WET 2013. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521780971.013 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2013 Circulating libraries a list specifying alternative options if the first choice were not available.17 Fourth, and finally, circulating library users were haunted by the fears of infectious diseases and the threat of them being spread by contaminated but still circulating books: 7. NosubscribershallreturntotheClubanybookwhichhasbeenexposedto infection from any CONTAGIOUS DISEASE. THE CLUB WILL BEAR THE LOSS. (A doctor’s certificate will be required before any further book is issued.)18 For the middle-class borrower there was one more drawback that had its roots in the fear of infection, though here the fear was of moral rather than physical corruption. The larger libraries, and the smaller that wished in the English fashion to ape their betters, viewed themselves as having a moral function and did 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 authors such as Charles Reade (with Cream), George Meredith (with The ordeal of Richard Feverel) and George Moore (with A modern lover, A mummer’s wife and Esther Waters) found it difficult or impossible to have some of their works circulated by Mudie’s or Smith’s.19 In the librarians’ defence, however, one might say that on occasion the decision may have been as much an economic as a moral one. Libraries needed a large subscriber base, and anything that might have made their collections less suitable to females (commonly regarded as the more vulnerable) would have seriously reduced the size of the market. Why then, given all the drawbacks and limitations for both proprietors and subscribers, did circulating libraries flourish in the period after 1850? One answer is that they had been part of the British way of books since the early eighteenth 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 is necessary that Subscribers should name at least double the number of Volumes required for each exchange, and the selection should consist entirely of Books actually published and in circulation at the Library’ (from A catalogue of the books in the General Subscription Circulating Library at Reading,[1887]). In smaller libraries the need to offer a range of alternatives was that much greater: in Vibert’s circulating library in Penzance, which had 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 results were much less than Moore claimed for it. (A facsimile edition of this pamphlet, with an introduction by Pierre Coustillas, was published by the Harvester Press of Hassocks, Sussex, in 1976.)

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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)in 1842 in a stationery, newspaper and bookselling business he ran at 28 Upper King Street (now Southampton Row), London. Ten years later he moved to larger premises at 510 New Oxford Street. He expanded on this site and on 17 December 1860 opened a major new gallery and library. With its stuccoed exterior, round hall whose lantern roof was supported on Ionic columns that were echoed by pilasters, the 1860 library was neoclassically grand. Despite this, we should think of Mudie’s circulating library more as a great warehouse, rather like an Argos store today.The books were not browsed but ordered from a catalogue and brought to the borrower waiting at one of a number of semi-circular counters, each one dedicated to surnames that began with a letter within a speciﬁed alphabetic range (say ‘L to R’) by a library assistant. 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. Borrowers who could not attend in person, and who could afford a minimum two guinea subscription, 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 the predominant category in the titles listed in the Publishers’ Circular. See S. Eliot, Some patterns 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 cost St John Rivers?’, Nineteenth-Century Literature 56 (2001), 164–7.

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Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008 Downloaded from Cambridge Histories Online by IP 128.103.149.52 on Sat Mar 02 18:29:03 WET 2013. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521780971.013 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2013 Circulating libraries them by special vans within a 20 mile radius of Oxford Street.22 Mudie’s third section was the Country department, which dealt with the rest of the UK and the 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 and beyond. Some of these were sent to individuals, but many went to supply local book clubs and libraries. At Mudie’s height in the later nineteenth century up to 1,000 boxes might be sent out every week.23 Supporting this distribution system were a number of branch offices: 281 Regent Street and 2 King Street, Cheapside in London, and in Birmingham and Manchester as well. Beyond these were the many small local circulating libraries that took out an institutional subscription to Mudie’s, and displayed the 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’s catalogues that announced ‘Selections of one hundred volumes of popular novels, 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 one guinea.25 Second, in order to make this low rate profitable, he conducted the library 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 acceptable range of books to as wide a range of borrowers as possible. Fourth, in order to guarantee the demand, he advertised widely, listing the latest books on offer and suggesting that large numbers of copies were available.26 In this he was not exaggerating. Mudie’s was commonly the best single customer that Victorian publishers had. In 1855 the library bought 2,500 copies of the third and fourth volumes of Macaulay’s bestseller the History of England,in1857 3,250 copies of Livingstone’sTravelsand18591,000copiesofTennyson’sIdylls.27 Evenwhennot ordering 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, Notting Hill 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 1860s with its 10s 6d rate, quickly failed. See Griest, 23. 26 Mudie’s advertised relentlessly; in The Athenaeum in 1880, for instance, Mudie advertised in the issues for 10 January, 13 and 27 March, 3 and 10 April, 15 May, 31 July, 28 August, 2 and 9 and 16 October, 6 and 13 and 20 November, 25 December. 27 Griest, Mudie’s Circulating Library, 20–1.

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Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008 Downloaded from Cambridge Histories Online by IP 128.103.149.52 on Sat Mar 02 18:29:03 WET 2013. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521780971.013 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2013 libraries of our own and loss on the publishing of a novel. A first, three-decker edition of an average novel might well have a print run of no more than a few hundred sets. An order from Mudie’s for between 100 and 200 sets – not uncommon – could push the novel into profit even if no further edition were published.28 In the case of a popular novelist such as Walter Besant, the order from Mudie’s alone could amount 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 that we are in danger of forgetting that the library’s stock was a broad one, with a preponderance of non-fiction. Using a crude but consistent criterion – the number 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 to non-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 the highest 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 and therefore direct comparisons are not easy, the balance was closer to Mudie’s earlier years: 67% non-fiction, 33% fiction.30 Mudie’s advertisements, certainly in the later nineteenth century, favoured non-fiction.31 Perhaps the apparent predominance of fiction in the Mudie list was due to the 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’s shelves. Between January 1858 and October 1859 Mudie claimed to have added 391,083 volumes to the library, 165,445 being fiction.32 Here fiction represented 42% of the total volumes (as opposed to titles). In the ten years between 1853 and 1862 Mudie claimed to have added 960,000 volumes to the Library, nearly half of which were fiction.33 However, despite fiction never being more than half in bulk – and probably about one-third in terms of titles – of Mudie’s lending 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 Leah in 1875: Smith’s: 25,Day:13, Cawthorn: 13, Mitchell: 6, Mudie: 125 (Mudie’s Circulating Library, 25). 29 Letter from Andrew Chatto to Walter Besant, 18 October 1883, Chatto & Windus Letter Book 17, fol. 290; Ledger Book 3, fol. 775. 30 Asimilarbalancecanbefoundinlargerprovincialcirculatinglibraries:inJolly’sCirculating Library general catalogue (Bath, 1909) non-fiction is listed in single column between pages 1 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 exclusively of non-fiction. 32 Griest, Mudie’s Circulating Library, 38. 33 Griest, Mudie’s Circulating Library, 21.

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Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008 Downloaded from Cambridge Histories Online by IP 128.103.149.52 on Sat Mar 02 18:29:03 WET 2013. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521780971.013 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2013 Circulating libraries general and the three-volume novel in particular that loom largest on Mudie’s shelves. Scholars have commonly assumed that the three-decker novel was, if not actually created, then certainly encouraged and sustained by Mudie and his ilk as the form that particularly benefited the circulating system based on the borrowing of one volume at a time. Historically and logically this is a somewhat difficult view to sustain. Mudie can certainly be exonerated from the guilt of creating what many came to regard as a monster. The three-decker had emerged at the beginning of the nineteenth century as one of the preferred forms for the respectable novel, but it only achieved its fully inflated price of 31s 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 in 1894 which killed off the form. After the First World War Mudie’s contracted and moved premises, but it survived to the mid-1930s: forty years of life after the death of the form that was supposed to have sustained it. If the novel was a compelling one, then clearly the demand for volumes 2 and 3 would be strong. If it was not, then the later volumes might languish on the shelves earning the library nothing. A circulating library’s economy depends 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 a single-volume novel unless the unit price is different. The very best discount Mudie’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 cost it about 5s. By 1842 Bentley and others had established 6s as a standard price for the first single-volume reprint of novels. Even with a much less generous discount, 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 less than the price of a discounted three-decker; if it was not, there would be only a single volume, not three, taking up room on his shelves. A single-volume novel, having much more matter in it than a volume of a three-decker, would not have to be returned so often, thus reducing both the borrower’s and the lender’s costs. From the 1860s onwards, Mudie’s and all other circulating libraries buying the three-decker novel were under growing pressure from the publishers. As has been established, it was difficult for a library to make a profit on a volume in less than nine months to a year. By the late 1860s single-volume cheap reprints of three-deckers were being issued less than a year after their first edition. By the 1880s this reprint gap could be as short as three months. Over the same

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Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008 Downloaded from Cambridge Histories Online by IP 128.103.149.52 on Sat Mar 02 18:29:03 WET 2013. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521780971.013 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2013 libraries of our own period the price of these reprints fell from 6sto3s 6d and then in some cases to 2s.34 This meant that it became more and more difficult to make a profit from three-deckers and then sell them on. By 1884 Mudie was admitting to George Bentley that: ‘we find by careful analysis of figures extending over 2 or 3 years that not one in twelve of the 3 vol novels pays its way.We are not alone. Other libraries feel the difficulty arising from the over production and over pressure of this class of book.’35 With more and more uncirculating and unsellable novels accumulating in the basement of Mudie’s building (ominously named ‘the Catacombs’), the Library had to find alternative methods of lending texts to its readers. As many novels were serialised in monthly magazines prior to book publication, it was sometimes possible for a circulating library to wait until the annual volume of the magazine was produced and then buy that instead of, or in addition to, the three-volume version. In October 1883, for instance, Mudie cut his initial order for WalterBesant’s Allinagardenfair from 500 sets to 300 because he was offered the annual volume of Good Words in which the novel had been serialised.36 But such tactics were never going to be enough. On 27 June 1894 Mudie’s and Smith’s issued circulars which, among other things, required publishers to offer multiple-volume novels at no more than 4s a volume less discounts and insisted 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 its death-knell. Despite this, some publishers, notably Chatto and Windus, did make an attempt to sustain the form over the next two years. In November 1895 the firm was still advertising four new novels in three-decker form, although now priced at 15s the set.37 In October 1896 just one three-decker was on offer from the same publisher.38 Only one conclusion is possible from this: Chatto and Windus tried to carry on because it was profitable to do so. This implies that, one, the profit margins for a publisher were very large when the cover price was 31s 6d for they were large enough to carry on at 15s; two, a publisher might well be able to make a profit on the most mediocre of novels as long as he sold a goodly part of the first, and possibly only,print run to the circulating libraries. It appears that the inflated price of the three-decker may well have been 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 6th series, 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 to Mudie’s total stock (%)

>3 vols. 3 vols. 2 vols. 1 vol. 1857 0.49 21.71 10 67.8 1865 0.47 31.63 14.11 53.8 1869 0.49 34.15 20.145.26 1872 0.13 37.37 18.22 44.28 1881 0.17 34.95 13.62 51.26 1884 0.23 38.86 14.65 46.26 1889 0.140.24 12.34 47.32 1890 0.134.45 14.24 51.2 1891 0.234.33 13.34 52.13 1892 0.22 33.93 11.91 53.91 1893 0.16 29.72 11.94 58.19 1894 0 28.94 11.94 59.12 1899 0.04 22.58.55 68.9 it would go a long way to explain why, in the period 1861–4 when Mudie’s was in severe financial difficulties with many large debts owed to the major publishing houses, those houses propped Mudie’s up, and why many became major shareholders when in July 1864 the Library was converted into a limited liability company.39 For a commercial library one of the most accurate accounts of its nature is to be found in its catalogue. We have already seen that fiction was never the predominant presence in Mudie’s, despite its reputation. However, what remains unanswered is how important was the three-decker within Mudie’s fiction stock. Table 11.1 is based on sampling every fifth page of a number of catalogues between 1857 and 1899 and converting the numbers into a percentage share 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-thirds of the titles. In the 1860s and 1870s three-deckers accounted for just over a third of the titles; this increased to 39–40% between 1884 and 1889.Atthe very point that Mudie was complaining about the Catacombs filling up with three-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 economic survival 1861–64’, Publishing History 34 (1993), 21–50.

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Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008 Downloaded from Cambridge Histories Online by IP 128.103.149.52 on Sat Mar 02 18:29:03 WET 2013. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521780971.013 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2013 libraries of our own to correct the problem four years before the 1894 ultimatum. Between 1889 and 1894 the three-volume novel share dropped from 40%to29%. By the end of the century the three-decker novel was back to around one-fifth of fiction titles, much as it had been in 1857. It is striking that the despised two-volume novel always had a firm place on Mudie’s shelves, despite what publishers told writers about the need to bulk two volumes up to three. Certainly, three volumes would take up more shelf-room and sometimes (but not always) Mudie’s might order more copies of sets than of one-volume titles,40 but nevertheless the single-volume work of fiction, which was supposed to have triumphed in the circulating libraries only after 1894 was, in fact, a very significant presence in the catalogues from the very beginning. Mudie’ssurvivedintothemid-1930spartlybecauseitwasneverasdependent on fiction or on the three-decker novel as historians have suggested, and partly becauseitfollowedthepatternofmostothercirculatinglibrariesindiversifying within and beyond the book trade. It had, for instance, very large bookselling and bookbinding departments which issued monthly catalogues to be sent ‘Gratis and Post Free to any address’.41 These catalogues consisted of ‘1. Recent Popular Books at Greatly Reduced Prices’, ‘2. Works by Popular Authors in Sets or Separately’ and ‘3. Books in Ornamental Bindings, for Presents, Prizes, etc.’. Any large circulating library would need a bindery to repair or replace bindings of loan books and bind up the tens of thousands of catalogues produced annually, but Mudie’s made a virtue out of necessity by producing fine and lavish bindings to satisfy the carriage trade and – as the educational system expanded – the growingly important ‘prize book’ market.42 The most significant catalogue was ‘1. Recent Popular Books at Greatly Reduced Prices’. This was where Mudie’s attempted to increase profits or recoup loses on non- or no-longer-circulating books. The catalogue issued on 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 average order 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 of three-volume titles from Smith and Elder between 1858 and 1865. However, from Bentley between 1857 and 1859 he ordered an average of 421 copies of one-volume titles and only 325 copies of three-volume sets. Signiﬁcantly, in both cases Mudie’s orders represented a higher proportion of the average total sales for three-volume titles (Smith and Elder 40%, 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 of second leaf. 42 In April 1888, for instance, the buyer was offered a set of seventeen volumes of Besant and 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) and offered books at substantial discounts. Daniel Deronda (1876) could be had in four 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 Ariadne published in June 1877 at 31s 6d was being offered at 5s; R. D. Blackmore’s Erema had been published at 31s 6d in November 1877 and Mudie’s was discounting it 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 offered just one month later by Mudie’s at 9s. One suspects that some of these were new, uncirculated copies. Certainly by January 1913 Mudie’s discount list had forty pages devoted to 6s novels mostly discounted to between 1s 6d and 2s and at least 6% of these were described as being ‘new’. After the formalisation of the Net Book Agreement in 1901 such discounting became much more contentious, as the Times Book Club was to discover. On the corner of the New Oxford Street building and running three-quarters of the way down the four-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 a world changed beyond recognition since 1842.Asinthe1860s, attempts were made to enlist the publishers’ financial support but on this occasion to no avail.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) established in the early 1790s in Mayfair, which had become a ‘Newspaper agents, Booksellers and Binders’ business by 1818.By1821 the ﬁrm had opened a reading room in the Strand in which subscribers (by the month or year) could read a wide range of newspapers and magazines.44 We should not forget the important role periodicals played in circulating libraries, large and small: Mudie’s certainly had magazines for loan, and not merely because they contained serialised novels; and bound volumes of periodicals featured commonly in its clearance catalogues. Between 1848 and 1860 W.H. Smith was establishing bookstalls in most of the 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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Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008 Downloaded from Cambridge Histories Online by IP 128.103.149.52 on Sat Mar 02 18:29:03 WET 2013. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521780971.013 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2013 libraries of our own 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 circulating library 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 bookstalls as library outlets. Mudie refused (possibly because the fee offered, estimated at £1,000 per annum, was too low) and, as a consequence, Smith’s proceeded to 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 dependence on many small outlets rather than a few large ones made the library rather differentfromMudie’s.Thesubscriberregisteredatoneofthemajorbookstalls and could borrow from its stock of books but had to return the volume to the same stall. This implies that the majority of frequent users were commuters who naturally passed the same bookstall each working day.By 1861 there were no fewer than 177 bookstalls from which books could be borrowed. Even the largest stalls were pressed for space, so most books would be ordered from printed catalogues, delivered by train, and be available for collection the following day. In the early decades the main library stock was centralised on Smith’s London ofﬁces at 186 Strand, which also dealt with subscriptions and the disposal of surplus stock.46 By the early 1880s there were over 12,000 subscribers to the Library.47 By 1908 it was calculated that the central depot had over a million volumes in stock, and by 1949 more than 500 of Smith’s bookstalls and book shops were functioning as branches of the circulating library.48 Pressure on space led to Smith’s being less enthusiastic about three-decker novels. 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.In1848 Smith’s had proposed a circulating library 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, Portugal Street, 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. Smith see S. Colclough, ‘“Agreater outlay than any return”: The library of WH Smith & Son, 1860–1874’, Publishing History 51 (2003), 67–93; S. Colclough, ‘“Purifying the sources of amusement”? The railway bookstalls of WH Smith & Son, 1855–1860’, Publishing History 53 (2004), 5–30.

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Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008 Downloaded from Cambridge Histories Online by IP 128.103.149.52 on Sat Mar 02 18:29:03 WET 2013. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521780971.013 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2013 Circulating libraries was to be preferred. It is not insignificant that it was in the decade following the establishment of Smith’s Library that publishers began to issue one-volume cheap reprints of three-decker novels soon after the first edition.49 By the mid- 1850s publishers such as Routledge and Chapman and Hall were producing single-volume novels bound in a glazed, often yellow,board with an illustration on the front cover and selling at 1s, 2s or 2s 6d. Smith’s themselves, using Chapman and Hall as agents, produced such ‘yellowbacks’ in the late 1850s and early 1860s.50 In other words, Smith’s station bookstalls represented an important outlet for both bought and borrowed one-volume novels. Long before the ultimatum of 1894, Smith’s circulating library was rehearsing the role of a library without the three-decker. As we have seen in Mudie’s, lending and selling were not opposites, they were both in the continuum of a successful circulating library’s activity.Smith’s too had to get rid of non-circulating titles and had done so since the Library’s inception by issuing catalogues of ‘New and second-hand books at greatly reduced prices’. The importance of this process was made clear in Smith’s training literature: ‘the revenue return from subscriptions is so inadequate to produce a substantial profit that the disposal of the books may justly be coupled with the other issue – obtaining subscriptions for their use’.51 By May 1881 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 clear from the accounts of the Library that it was only returning a modest annual profit in the 1880s because resale of books compensated for the losses made on circulating them. Significantly,by 1893–4 even this was not enough and Smith’s library made a loss in that year.53 After 1894 the Library’s profits increased. However, it was never more than a minor adjunct to Smith’s main activities of newspaper and book selling and distribution. For instance, between 1 October 1899 and 30 September 1900 the firm’s total profits were £189,243 4s 4d; the Library contributed £6,333 0s 2d to this, just 3.4% of the total.54 The liberals in the Smith empire liked to think 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 the sixteenth to the twentieth century (Winchester, 1995), 159. 54 W.H. Smith & Son Archive, x.121.

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Boot’s Booklover’s Library A number of large commercial circulating libraries were founded on the cusp of 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 and Smith’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 of what such libraries should be.56 Unlike its older, mid-Victorian models, Boot’s was overwhelmingly a fiction-based library, much of its original stock being derived 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 to juvenile works and no fewer than 534 pages to fiction.58 It was highly competitive, its annual subscription rate of 10s 6d being half that of its main rivals, and non-subscribers were welcome to borrow individual books at 1dor2d a time (with a 2s 6d returnable deposit), a pattern of subscription more common to small local libraries than national ones. National, however, it was, with 256 branches 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 slowly being relinquished. The catalogue for 1905 reluctantly conceded: Whilst we do not pretend to dictate to our readers as to either the quality or range of their reading, we realise fully the duty we owe to the Public and the State in the facilities that, through our large Circulating Library,we afford for the 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 be found at: http://www.boots-plc.com/information/info.asp?Level3ID 39. For information on Boots librarians see N. Moody,‘Fashionable design and good service:= the spinster librarians at Boots Booklovers Library’, in E. Kerslake and N. Moody (eds.), Gendering Library 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 bound to supply on demand. If we may not dictate in this matter to our readers, we can at least take particular pains not to catalogue any books that appear to us unsuitable for general circulation.59 As with more august catalogues, what was listed and what was available were rarely quite the same thing. Perhaps because Boot’s was aimed at a socially lower market, its early catalogues also performed an educational function. Entries for the ‘best known books’ were augmented by plot summaries derived mostly from Baker’s Guide to the best fiction. Thus Boot’s could be seen as contributing to the process of canon definition and stabilisation occurring in the wake of educational reform in 1870 and later, and the creation of literature as a university subject. What was implicit in Smith’s was explicit in Boot’s: the library was a loss leader whose most important function was to draw customers into the shop. For this reason the library was always located at the back of the premises or on its first floor so that borrowers had to run the gauntlet of consumer temptations both there and back. Even a loss leader, however, needed to be capable of delivering some sort of a return, and Boot’s too issued lists of library books 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 which was a huge increase in book and newspaper production, a dramatic fall in book prices and fierce competition selling textual materials to a market that was fully literate by 1913.61 The arrival of cheap mass-circulation daily newspapers, the first being the Daily Mail launched in May 1896 by Alfred Harmsworth (later Lord Northcliffe), put pressure on traditional newspapers such as The Times. By 1905 it was devising a system to boost its circulation: anyone paying an annual subscription of £318s 0dtoThe 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 edition of one of his novels E. M. Forster observed: ‘Unless one undersells secondhand library copies it would not be any good’ (letter dated 29 March 1911, Berg Collection, New York Public Library). 61 S. Eliot, Some patterns and trends in British publishing, –(London, 1994), 13–14.

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Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008 Downloaded from Cambridge Histories Online by IP 128.103.149.52 on Sat Mar 02 18:29:03 WET 2013. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521780971.013 Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2013 libraries of our own 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 the books weekly, free within the London postal district; for country subscribers special 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 Baker but 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 had a ‘published price’ and an ‘our price’ printed next to it; net books had just one price. This approach proved influential. Even as far away as Plymouth, Pophams Circulating Library,which stated that it was ‘In connection with the Times Book Club’, published an undated catalogue in which every single item had 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 Book Agreement that had come into force in 1900 after ten years of negotiation and experiment and which forbade selling new books below their published price. The provisions of Class A may well help to explain the common assumption among publishers and booksellers in 1905, namely,that the TBC had signed the Net Book Agreement. Class B, however, should have given them pause: the difference between absolutely new and ‘clean and uninjured’ might be very difficult to establish and, in any case, offering a 20% discount on net books a month after publication clearly was a direct challenge to the new alliance formed between the booksellers and the publishers. The Book War, precipitated by the arrival of the TBC, was messy and long drawn out and included a general agreement among publishers, reached in October 1906, not to supply books to the TBC for circulation, or to TheTimes or

62 A catalogue of the most important books available for free circulation among subscribers to The Times (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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Conclusion Mudie’s went into liquidation in 1937; W. H. Smith’s Library closed its doors in 1961, and the Times Book Club in 1962; Boot’s Booklover’s Library followed suitinFebruary1966.Therepercussionsspreadoutthroughthesubtlenetwork of dependency to the smaller and local libraries. Bath, which had had fifteen circulating libraries in 1852, saw its last, owned by Ulrico Maurice, close in 1966. The factors that caused these failures were many.As we have seen, many larger libraries had functioned, covertly or openly,as discount sellers of new or nearly new books. The 1930s saw the first of the modern book clubs founded in the UK and Penguin began issuing its first sixpenny paperbacks in 1935.In 1966 Smith’s in association with Doubleday & Co. set up Book Club Associates which now dominates the UK book club market. All these events effectively underminedthesystembywhichthecirculatinglibrariescouldturnapotential loss into a modest profit by reselling cheaper books. Smaller and working-class libraries, particularly in the midlands and the north, survived for longer, but the spread of television in the 1960s, particularly commercial television with its 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 later nineteenth century onwards, expanded rapidly after the First World War and commonly became open access. In the 1960sand1970s, with less concern to promote education over entertainment, public libraries began stocking in large quantities the sorts of ﬁction once only available in the twopenny libraries. In essence, in the later twentieth century the various markets once served so extensively by the circulating libraries found freer, cheaper and easier sources of supply, and economic natural selection did the rest. However, a faint echo of those circulating libraries that charged by the volume and did not exact a subscription can be found in the early twenty-ﬁrst century: 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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