Libraries and Class Division: Quasi-Public Libraries in the Bourgeois British System Before the Twentieth Century

Abstract

The author explains subscription and circulating libraries, reflecting class divisions, during the xviii and xix centuries in Great Britain. He asserts that these two types of libraries clearly demonstrate   socially stratified service for the upper, middle and lower classes. That is, these libraries were classist because they universalized a system of values belonging to the ruling class in the context of the market and economic power related to the cultural sphere of capitalism.  It is also clear that the pursuit of knowledge and information in these libraries was not feasible for most members of the working class because they had to daily perform exhausting and stressful tasks.