To Buy or to Borrow? Circulating Libraries and Novel Reading in Britain, 1778-1828

Abstract

What access did readers have to fiction in Britain during the Romantic period? To what extent might the fiction market have been segmented into readers who borrowed their novels from libraries - sometimes stealing or failing to return them - and those who bought them new or second-hand at bookshops? Many circulating-library proprietors would also serve the novel-reading population in their capacity as professional booksellers. As librarians, they would promote the value-for-money aspect of renting fiction to readers of limited means; as booksellers, they enabled readers to purchase their particular favourites among their bookstocks as well. Purchasing a book, though, did not equate with genuinely wishing and intending to read it. Failing to return a circulating-library novel, or stealing one, may have been a stronger indication that a title was indeed being selected to be read - and then being retained to be re-read.