Public libraries past

This is the time of year when people take stock and look both backwards and forwards. This makes it an appropriate occasion to publish articles about the past history of and future prospects for public libraries.

After realising retrospectively how fortunate I was to have had so much good-quality free reading material, I went on to think about the people of the past and wonder what they had in the way of public libraries. 

There is a lot of information about the libraries of the past available online. I now know that the public libraries I used were preceded first by libraries that charged their members then later by free libraries that were established by Victorian social reformers primarily for the improvement of the working classes. 

Predecessors of public libraries
As books were an expensive luxury, for many centuries only people at the higher levels of society had their own private libraries. 

Ecclesiastical, vocational, social and educational establishments also had collections of books, semi-private libraries that only selected people had access to.

Circulating libraries, or lending libraries, were established in the 18th century. It was just the books that circulated: these were not mobile or travelling libraries! 

Circulating libraries were run for profit, so subscriptions and borrowing fees were payable. Although there were costs, borrowing a book was very much cheaper than buying it would have been. By joining a circulating library, even people who could afford to buy books would get a lot more reading material for their money.

John Masefield’s Box of Delights & Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather

This time last year, John Masefield’s Box of Delights was featured.  The story ends on Christmas Eve, which makes it very suitable reading for the holiday season.

Now it is the turn of Terry Pratchett’s festive fairytale Hogfather (1996). 

The Hogfather is a Discworld character. He is similar to Father Christmas: he is a mythical fat and jolly bearded man who wears red and white and brings presents for the good children of Discworld on Hogswatchnight (December 32nd). He travels by sleigh; it is drawn by pigs rather than reindeer though. 

Although some readers say that Hogfather is Terry Pratchett’s best book, it is not at the top of my list: that place is occupied by his books about the Discworld witches!

There is not much in Hogfather that inspires commentary, however I noticed some interesting similarities and common themes and elements in these two very different seasonal stories and decided to list a few of them.

A few common features
A big metaphysical battle is a major theme in both books.

In The Box of Delights the battle is between good and evil; in Hogfather it is between rationality and belief. It is about logic and rules versus magic and mythology.

More about Diana Wynne Jones and her book deprivation

Some writers have very interesting things to say about books, reading and writing. I like it even more when they mention public libraries too!

Diana Wynne Jones is yet another writer whose thoughts on these topics have inspired some commentary. 

I have something to add to the previous article about the dire shortage of reading material that she experienced as a child.

I said earlier that thanks to public libraries I didn’t miss much in the way of good books when I was growing up. I am very grateful for that. I feel very sorry for imaginative children with enquiring minds who were forced to subsist on a diet of crumbs of reading material.

Diana Wynne Jones is a little ambivalent on the subject. After reading about the perpetual book famine and the desperate begging, saving and scrounging, I was surprised to see that she said that perhaps it was all for the best in some ways.

Diana Wynne Jones and the shortage of reading material

Diana Wynne Jones is yet another writer who was a voracious reader as a child. Unfortunately, she never had nearly enough books to satisfy her appetite for reading material. As she put it, she suffered from a perpetual book famine.

Her book Reflections: On the Magic of Writing contains some interesting - although very painful to read - autobiographical material; it was the source of an amusing anecdote, and it also provides some information about the vital part that books and reading played in her early life.

A few extracts will show what she was up against when trying to obtain more books to read. 

A starvation diet of books
Diana Wynne Jones’s father was stingy and tight-fisted in the extreme: 

“...birthdays were the one occasion when my father could be persuaded to buy books. By begging very hard, I got Puck of Pook’s Hill when I was ten and Greenmantle when I was twelve. But my father was inordinately mean about money. He solved the Christmas book-giving by buying an entire set of Arthur Ransome books, which he kept locked in a high cupboard and dispensed one between the three of us each year.”

So she too liked Rudyard Kipling and John Buchan! 

I would have felt very short-changed indeed if all I was given for Christmas was one Arthur Ransome book - and he is not one of my favourite authors anyway!

In praise of public libraries

The previous article mentions the great debt owed by writers such as Terry Pratchett to the public libraries that they used as children. 

They are not alone; public libraries helped to make me what I am today. I briefly mentioned the key role that they played in my early life here; the recently-quoted endorsements have inspired me to cover the subject in more detail.

Libraries in my early life
Going to the library was a major part of life when I was growing up - just as going to school and going to the sweet shop were! 

I did have some books of my own and I also used the school libraries, but this was not nearly enough for me: I always wanted more and better reading material.

I lived 'by chance' close to some very big public libraries as a child. I know that small buildings appear large to small children, but I revisited some of them and found them just as imposing now as they were then.

They gave me a never-ending supply of high quality books. 

I saw libraries as treasure troves; the books on the shelves offered me escape, distraction, education and entertainment. They helped to fill some gaps in my life and gave me things I couldn’t get in the real world. They gave me far more information than I was getting at school or from the people in my life.

I joined the huge local library when my family moved to London. Even though it was very well stocked and I also found many good books in the school library, this still wasn’t enough to feed my insatiable appetite for food for my mind and fuel for my imagination.

The great and positive influence of public libraries

This post was inspired by a quotation from Terry Pratchett that I found recently. He said this in his introduction to Dragons at Crumbling Castle: And Other Stories:

“... I taught myself how to write by reading as many books as I could carry home from the library.“

Many people do indeed learn to write by extensive reading, although obviously not all voracious readers go on to become published writers. Who knows what wonderful works might never have existed if their authors had not had access to large numbers of good-quality library books as children! 

Isaac Asimov is another writer to acknowledge his debt:

"I received the fundamentals of my education in school, but that was not enough. My real education, the superstructure, the details, the true architecture, I got out of the public library."

From his memoir I, Asimov

I like to see people giving credit where it is due! 

These quotations have given me the idea of creating a series of articles about public libraries, covering both my personal experiences and those of some of the writers mentioned on here. There will also be some background and general material. 

This exercise will help to pay off the huge debt that I owe to the library books that educated, inspired and entertained me as a child – and still do.

I hope that this dragon doesn't drop his book in the bath!

A last look at Joyce Collin-Smith’s Call No Man Master

This is the final article in the series inspired by Joyce Collin-Smith’s autobiographical work Call No Man Master (1988).  

In this book she describes her 50-year search for a genuine guru, a real spiritual master. She didn’t find one, but she encountered many unusual people of various religions and disciplines and learned a lot along the way.

This article highlights some remaining material of particular interest. There is a little more to say about cults and the damage that they do to their members, about the Maharishi Yogi and about the feeling of being alien to this world.

As I have described in one of the basic cult articles, anyone who gets involved with one is in danger of being left stranded. They may also have been encouraged to burn their bridges behind them, which gets them into double trouble.

There are some examples of this in Call No Man Master. 

The summaries of what Joyce Collin-Smith tells us speak for themselves.