The First "Public" Libraries in Great Britain

This article presents the first "public" libraries in Great Britain in the Early Modern Era (sixteenth-nineteenth centuries), before the first truly public libraries appeared in the mid-nineteenth century. Based on critical reading of primary sources and secondary literature, the various forms of libraries are presented and the development of public libraries in the early modern era is sketched. The analysis showed what access the public really had to these libraries, who used them, and what literature they read. Essentially, it was a matter of simultaneous development and mutual influence: it was neither accessible literature nor the public library that developed first, but their relationship was always mutually dependent and proportional. Although the first truly public libraries were the thing of the mid-nineteenth century, the interested public could access libraries in the Early Modern Era.