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Useful Knowledge or Polite Learning? A Reappraisal of Approaches to Subscription Library History

Abstract Subscription libraries and other similar eighteenth-century institutions are often thought to have served primarily as vehicles for enlightened politeness and sociability. However, given the growing importance of manufacturing, commerce, and the professions in provincial England in the late Georgian period, it seems reasonable to question whether these traditional explanations exhaust the full range of motivating factors that lay behind the founding of subscription libraries. Through a case study of subscription library formation in Georgian Leeds, I propose that subscription libraries met needs that extended beyond those commonly identified and included the formation of collections of useful knowledge to aid professional training and practice and the educational and other needs of those involved in trade and commerce.