A History of the Library: Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen (1850)
Arthur der Weduwen and Andrew Pettegree, authors of The Library: A Fragile History
Of all the accomplishments of human civilisation, the creation of libraries, making the preservation and transmission of knowledge possible, is surely the greatest. The greatest of them all, the ancient library of Alexandria, remains the gold standard of cultural achievement today, one that haunts and inspires in equal measure.
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Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen’s new book, The Library, A Fragile History, takes on the ‘long and tumultuous history’ of these noble institutions, from the clay tablets of ancient Nineveh to the problematic Google Books project (inspired, like so many other attempts to ‘encompass the world’s knowledge’, by the library of Alexandria). This is an unflinching look at library history, one that does not shy away from the neglect, the destruction and the moments when knowledge was lost.
The authors highlight the importance of private collections. Until the introduction of printing in the mid-fifteen century, and for years afterwards, books were only accessible to the educated elite – the only people who could afford to buy them and more importantly were capable of reading them. Their collections provide us with snapshots of knowledge at specific moments in history, telling us about the collector’s tastes and interests. These books were often dispersed on the owner’s death, unless they were given to an institutional library which would then have the responsibility of looking after them. The way in which subsequent generations cared for, or failed to care for, older collections, deciding which books should be kept and which thrown away has preoccupied generations of scholars and librarians.
In this episode, Pettegree and Weduwen, who are both academics at the University of St Andrews, take us back to 1850, a pivotal moment in the history of public libraries. Increased literacy in the nineteenth century enfranchised new readers whose taste for ‘penny dreadfuls’ and trashy romances were absolutely not the kind of books librarians wanted on their shelves. There was a paternalistic desire to use libraries as a form of social control; there were concerns about the type of people public libraries would attract, and the dangers of providing them with thrilling, rather than improving, literature. Some librarians even hid novels on shelves amongst the non-fiction books in the hope that readers would pick up something more informative on their visits to the library. Education, prestige, preservation, reputation laundering, neglect and destruction – libraries have fulfilled a huge variety of roles throughout their history.
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Show Notes
Scene One: London, The House of Commons. The debate surrounding the Public Libraries Act is in full swing, giving us the chance to understand what this act meant to the development of libraries, and why it failed to gain so little support outside Parliament.
Scene Two: Bordeaux, France. The great municipal library of Bordeaux, one of the finest public collections in France, and one of many similar Bibliotheques municipales. Although France had a system of public libraries that were, on paper, the envy of the world (due to the size and reputation of their collections), in reality they were tombs of books: rarely used, badly funded and frequently looted.
Scene Three: New York, USA. The famous public library building was still decades in the future, but New York had a highly diverse system of different libraries, for different publics, that explain why a great central collection was so long in the making.
Mementos: Arthur, One of the books stolen by Count Libri that went missing in the mists of time in order to return it to its rightful bibliothèque municipale. Andrew, mid 19th century ‘triple-decker’ edition of The History of Pendennis by William Makepeace Thackeray.
People/Social
Presenter: Violet Moller
Guest: Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Unseen Histories
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About Andrew Pettegree
Andrew Pettegree is professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews and one of the leading experts on Europe during the Reformation. He is the author of several prize-winning books and former vice-president of the Royal Historical Society.
About Arthur de Weduwen
Arthur der Weduwen is a British Academy postdoctoral fellow and deputy director of the Universal Short Title Catalogue at St Andrews. He is the author of several books and he owns a small library of seventeenth and eighteenth century books, which, as research for The Library has shown, is probably doomed to be dispersed.