the Committee of the Marylebone Free Library.

Appeal letter from E A Somers preserved in East India Company Finance and Home Committee Papers IOR/L/F/2/169 No.53 of 1854



Marylebone Free Library was an immediate success. A week after the opening, Joseph Grote gave a progress report to the Marylebone Vestry. In the first five days there had been 677 readers , 663 male and 14 female, identified as coming from the social group for which the Library was intended – the ‘respectable class of mechanics’. Grote said that many came in wearing their paper caps and flannel jackets. The readers' behaviour was impeccable: ‘as much quiet and order reigned every evening in the Marylebone Free Library as they would find in the library of the British Museum’. A total of 687books had been selected: 312 history; 289 literature, poetry, and drama; 40 science and arts; 19 philosophy; 17 theology; 12 law, politics, and commerce. Grote hoped that these figures would be publicised to encourage the help of benevolent individuals ‘desirous of improving the moral and social condition of their fellow-creatures’.

The rooms were well-lit and warm, furnished with baize-covered reading tables, and writing materials were provided. Yet the public were keen to have the pleasure of reading at home so a lending library of 1,000 books was established and operated by working men. In the first eighteen months, 5,732 volumes were taken out, none of which was lost or wilfully damaged.

The occupations of the people using the reading rooms were tabulated in 1855. Male readers totalled 25,721 and of