The Iron Library: Victorian England and the British Museum Library

The first century of the British Museum Library and its Reading Room (1753-1860) illustrates the political, economic, and social considerations that were changing the larger British society, both in small scale (as in purchasing changes in the wake of the French Revolution) and in large scale (as in the submerging of aristocratic authority in a democratizing period). I will investigate this evolution in order to trace three main movements and their larger relevance. Framed by the models of Jurgen Habermas' and Mary Poovey, and following a roughly chronological line, I will examine the continued influence of the aristocratic interests in what was an increasingly liberal institution. This influence plays out in admissions policies as well as government financial support. Those permitted access to the British Museum Library under the parameters so created included many of the leading figures of the Victorian age as well as autodidacts of all classes. This conglomeration within the Reading Room constituted a unique type of crowd, and I end my paper with a discussion of the tension within such a gathering and its depiction in literature and art of the period.