My heroine Charis didn’t like much about the social rounds in Bath. Had her mother been prepared to pay the subscription she would have enjoyed the circulating library.

By 1814, many towns and most cities had at least one circulating library, perhaps run by a bookstore or printer, but often a stand-alone business. Books were expensive. A 3-volume novel cost the equivalent of 100 dollars in today’s money. Paying a yearly subscription to a library meant you could borrow books that would otherwise be out of your reach.

Rules for a Subscription Library

Circulating libraries became social places, where ladies could meet and be seen. The reading rooms often offered games, and the libraries might also sell other merchandise.

As a member, you could purchase a copy of the library’s catalogue (for about sixpence). You could choose your book from the catalogue, and take a couple home, then another couple when you’d finished those ones. (The number you could borrow at a time varied from library to library.)

What would they think of my library, which I ‘visit’ over the Internet, and which allows me to download 15 ebooks at a time? Or, for that matter, my personal ebook collection, which numbers in the 1000s, many of which have cost me less than five dollars?

(Charis appears in The Beast Next Door, a novella in Valentines from Bath.)

Also see:

The Circulating Library in Regency Times: https://janeaustensworld.wordpress.com/2010/08/30/the-circulating-library-in-regency-times/

The Circulating Library: