University of Dundee DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Reading habits in Scotland circa 1750-1820 Dunstan, Vivienne Award date: 2010 Link to publication General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 26. Sep. 2021 DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Reading habits in Scotland circa 1750- 1820 Vivienne Dunstan 2010 University of Dundee Conditions for Use and Duplication Copyright of this work belongs to the author unless otherwise identified in the body of the thesis. It is permitted to use and duplicate this work only for personal and non-commercial research, study or criticism/review. You must obtain prior written consent from the author for any other use. Any quotation from this thesis must be acknowledged using the normal academic conventions. It is not permitted to supply the whole or part of this thesis to any other person or to post the same on any website or other online location without the prior written consent of the author. Contact the Discovery team ([email protected]) with any queries about the use or acknowledgement of this work. READING HABITS IN SCOTLAND circa 1750–1820 Vivienne Seonaid Dunstan A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Dundee, February 2010 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables 2 List of Figures 3 List of Graphs 4 Acknowledgements 5 Declaration and Statement 6 Abstract 7 Chapter 1: Introduction 8 Chapter 2: Accessing reading material 25 Chapter 3: Reading in the context of daily life 48 Chapter 4: What people were reading 76 Chapter 5: Styles of reading and reasons for reading 125 Chapter 6: Book ownership and reading 152 Chapter 7: Conclusions 200 Bibliography 210 Appendix 1: Creation of databases 241 Appendix 2: Digital copies of databases on CD 2 LIST OF TABLES Table 1: REI classification scheme for subject matter 22 Table 2: Occupational structure of Hawick Subscription Library subscribers circa 1810 34 Table 3: Occupational structure of Arbroath Subscription Library subscribers in 1804 34 Table 4: Booksellers with stock detailed in after-death inventories 80 Table 5: Top subjects stocked in Ebenezer Wilson’s bookshop in 1788 81 Table 6: Top titles in Ebenezer Wilson’s bookshop in 1788 based on numbers of copies stocked 82 Table 7: Most popular titles at Selkirk Subscription Library, 1799–1814 99 Table 8: Changing occupational balance of Gray Library borrowers 102 Table 9: Borrowings of occupational groups at Gray Library, 1790s–1810s 104 Table 10: Number of different titles Rev. Mr George Ridpath read (1755–1761) analysed by subject 108 Table 11: Number of different titles Elizabeth Rose of Kilravock read (1775–1780) analysed by subject 112 Table 12: Number of different titles Professor Robert Hamilton read (ca1790–1829) analysed by subject 115 Table 13: Number of different titles William Lyon Mackenzie read (1806–1820) analysed by subject 119 Table 14: Occupations of book owners found in Dumfriesshire inventories 160 Table 15: Categorising occupations of book owners in Dumfriesshire inventories 160 Table 16: Owners of books by key Enlightenment authors found in Dumfriesshire inventories 167 Table 17: Owners of various magazines found in Dumfriesshire inventories 169 Table 18: How frequently named magazines appear among Dumfriesshire book owners 169 Table 19: Subjects of books owned present in each decade in the Dumfriesshire inventories 172 3 Table 20: Larger book collections found in Dumfriesshire inventories 173 Table 21: Occupations of book purchasers in Meuros account book 181 Table 22: Categorising occupations of book purchasers in Meuros account book 181 Table 23: Most popular periodicals in Meuros account book 183 Table 24: Siblings collecting schoolbooks in turn per Meuros account book 186 Table 25: Larger-scale purchasers in Meuros account book 188 Table 26: Professor Robert Hamilton’s physical storage of books by subject 194 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Chapmen in Scotland between 1750 and 1820 with surviving wills or inventories 40 Figure 2: Sir David Wilkie’s ‘The Cotter’s Saturday Night’ (1837) 65 Figure 3: From Poems by Robert Burns (Edinburgh, 1801) 65 Figure 4: Subjects of volumes in Forfar Library, 1795 85 Figure 5: Subjects of volumes in Dundee Public Library, 1803 85 Figure 6: Most frequently borrowed books at Gray Library, decade by decade 93 Figure 7: Comparing popular books at Gray Library, male versus female borrowers 95 Figure 8: Sequence of borrowings from Selkirk Subscription Library in 1809 97 Figure 9: Subjects borrowed at Selkirk Subscription Library, 1799–1814 100 Figure 10: David Allan’s ‘The Connoisseurs’ (1780) 175 Figure 11: Variety of subjects read by Professor Robert Hamilton 190 Figure 12: Variety of subjects owned by Professor Robert Hamilton 191 4 LIST OF GRAPHS Graph 1: Borrowings by subject at Gray Library, 1732–1816 90 Graph 2: Decade-by-decade numbers of borrowings and borrowers at Gray Library, 1732–1816 92 Graph 3: Borrowings by month at Gray Library, 1732–1816 130 Graph 4: Numbers of book owners dying per decade found in Dumfriesshire inventories 159 5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank both of my supervisors Bob Harris and Charles McKean for their support throughout the many years of a part-time PhD, keeping me going when times were tough, asking insightful questions, and offering invaluable advice. I would also like to thank my fellow student Louisa Cross for her support, in the form of lively discussions, encouraging emails, and sharing relevant publications. I must also thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council who funded my doctoral research. Thanks are also due to all the librarians and archivists who facilitated access to various records and publications, but particularly to the staff of the archives at the University of Dundee, Hazel Anderson at the National Archives of Scotland who arranged for me to borrow a substantial amount of digital images of Dumfriesshire testamentary records, and the staff at the Heritage Hub in Hawick who allowed my husband to digitally photograph Selkirk Subscription Library’s voluminous borrowing records, letting me transcribe and analyse them at home, the only way I could work through them practically by that point. Both of my parents have been a great help throughout my history studies, both at Dundee and before. In addition I want to thank my secondary school history teacher, Ian Landles at Hawick, who at an early stage set my class a school project to produce a family tree, which was the prompt for my own journey of historical research, leading me to visit archives in the Borders and Edinburgh from a young age. But the greatest thanks of all must go to my husband Martin, who understands the challenges of doing a PhD more than most people, particularly when long-term ill as I am, and has been a rock throughout. 6 DECLARATION I, Vivienne Seonaid Dunstan, am the sole author of this thesis; that, unless otherwise stated, all references cited have been consulted by me; that the work of which the thesis is a record has been done by me, and that it has not been previously accepted for a higher degree. Signature: STATEMENT I confirm that the conditions of the relevant Ordinance and Regulations have been fulfilled. Signature: 7 ABSTRACT This thesis examines reading habits in Scotland between circa 1750 and 1820, a subject surprisingly little studied by historians before, given the backdrop of the Enlightenment, and traditional ideas about Scottish education and literacy. From a methodological viewpoint, reading as an activity at this time is often little recorded, frequently invisible in surviving historical records. Nevertheless, enough evidence exists for it to be studied analytically, using individual case studies alongside larger data sets, and varied records such as contemporary accounts and later memoirs, library catalogues and borrowing registers, and evidence for book ownership, such as after-death inventories and records of booksellers. To aid the analysis, a three-part subject classification system is introduced in this thesis to differentiate between different categories of reading—religious, entertainment and improvement—and to facilitate comparisons between individual examples of reading. Successive chapters explore how opportunities for reading evolved, how Scots fitted reading into their lives, what they chose to read, their reasons for reading and styles of reading, and book ownership and its relationship to reading. Each of these chapters explores a particular aspect of reading habits in more detail than has been done before. The final concluding chapter collates the evidence to explore the wider question of change over time. In particular, it argues for the growth of reading, a dramatic change in the subjects people chose to read—specifically the growth of improvement and self-education reading—and a marked permeation of reading throughout Scottish society by the end of the period, not being confined to the leisured classes. In addition, distinctive aspects of Scottish reading during this period are highlighted and discussed, and Scotland compared with England. Overall, the importance of reading to Scottish people during this period is clear, providing a valuable insight into Scottish minds and attitudes two centuries ago.