Charles Edward Mudie
Charles Edward Mudie (18 October 1818 – 28 October 1890), English publisher and founder of Mudie's Lending Library and Mudie's Subscription Library, was the son of a second-hand bookseller and newsagent. Mudie's efficient distribution system and vast supply of texts revolutionized the circulating library movement, while his "select" library influenced Victorian middle-class values and the structure of the three-volume novel. He was also the first publisher of James Russell Lowell's poems in England, and of Emerson's Man Thinking. Early life Charles Edward Mudie was born in 1818 to Scottish parents in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. He received most of his education by assisting in the family newspaper shop until he was twenty-two. In 1840, Mudie opened his first shop on Upper King Street, Bloomsbury. Mudie's Lending Library Mudie originally opened his circulating library to give the public greater access to non-fiction works — which comprised nearly one third of his stock — but the market value of the novel brought him financial success. In 1842, he began to lend books, charging subscribers one guinea per year for the right to borrow one exchangeable volume of a novel at a time. (At that time, other book-lenders charged between four and ten guineas.)